The Wild Places - (Landscapes) by Robert MacFarlane (Paperback)

About the Book

Are there any genuinely wild places left in Britain and Ireland? That is the question that Macfarlane poses to himself as he embarks on a series of breathtaking journeys through some of the archipelago's most remarkable landscapes. Illustrated.

Book Synopsis

From the author of The Old Ways and Underland, an "eloquent (and compulsively readable) reminder that, though we're laying waste the world, nature still holds sway over much of the earth's surface." --Bill McKibben

Winner of the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature and a finalist for the Orion Book Award

Are there any genuinely wild places left in Britain and Ireland? That is the question that Robert Macfarlane poses to himself as he embarks on a series of breathtaking journeys through some of the archipelago's most remarkable landscapes. He climbs, walks, and swims by day and spends his nights sleeping on cliff-tops and in ancient meadows and wildwoods. With elegance and passion he entwines history, memory, and landscape in a bewitching evocation of wildness and its vital importance.

Review Quotes

"A formidable consideration by a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence - poetry really - with the breathless ease of a master angler, a writer whose ideas and reach far transcend the physical region he explores . . . the natural world swells with meaning through Macfarlane's devoted observations." - The New York Times Book Review

"Macfarlane delivers crisp, engaging scenes . . . by the end of his peregrinations he had won me over completely." - Anthony Doerr, The Boston Globe

"In this eloquent travelogue, Macfarlane explores the last undomesticated landscapes in Britain and Ireland in a narration that blends history, memoir, and meditation . . . His striking prose not only evokes each locale's physicality in sensuous, deliberate detail, it glows with a reverence for nature in general and takes the reader on both a geographical and a philosophical journey." - Publishers Weekly

"The Old Ways confirms Macfarlane's reputation as one of the most eloquent and observant of contemporary writers about nature'" -- Scotland on Sunday (UK)

"Sublime... It sets the imagination tingling, laying an irresistible trail for readers to follow'"--Sunday Times (London)

"Read this and it will be impossible to take an unremarkable walk again" --Metro (London)

"He has a rare physical intelligence and affords total immersion in place, elements and the passage of time: wonderful" --Antony Gormley, artist

About the Author

Robert Macfarlane is the author of prizewinning books about landscape and the human heart: Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, The Old Ways, Landmarks, and Underland . He has contributed to Harper's, Granta, The New Yorker, the Observer (London), the Times Literary Supplement (London), and the London Review of Books. He is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.