FROM Venice to Florida's Gulf Coast, a new book sets out to show how Victorian thinker John Ruskin is still shaping our modern world 200 years after his birth.

Award-winning Financial Times journalist Andrew Hill came to the Ruskin Museum in Coniston to sign copies of Ruskinland - described as a "hugely original" work that is "part travelogue, part quest, part unconventional biography".

Mr Hill, who lives in St Albans, gave informal talks to fascinated visitors about the Victorian artist, geologist, social activist, writer, philosopher and early environmentalist who foresaw the greenhouse effect and who lived at Brantwood, overlooking Coniston Water.

Ruskin lived at the house, with its famous turret room, until his death in January 1900, aged 80.

The FT's associate editor explained how he set out to retrace Ruskin's steps, telling his life story, unearthing his influences, and visiting places where Ruskin's vision is still alive today.

Mr Hill discovered Ruskin's social criticism ten years ago and said he immediately saw the parallels" with the debate raging about the causes and consequences of the financial crisis.

He wrote in the Financial Times about the lessons to be found in Ruskin’s work.

In Mr Hill's new book, Ruskinland, he talks to people who, perhaps unknowingly, were influenced by Ruskin himself or his ideas. He asks what, if anything, people know about him, and how their work is linked to his "prophetic pronouncements".

Nineteenth century Arts and Crafts designer William Morris and Indian activist Mahatma Gandhi were among those lives were changed by reading Ruskin's work.

The author sets to out to explore how his ideas can help with modern-day problems such as social inequality and excessive pay for executives.

He also looks at Ruskin's appreciation of art and architecture, his draughtsmanship and his insistence that to see and draw the world is the best way to understand it fully.

Ruskinland has been published to coincide with the bicentenary of the Victorian thinker's birth in February 1819.

Journalist Mr Hill is a trustee of the Ruskin Foundation, which is responsible for the country's largest Ruskin archive.