Review by Peter Reason Martin Shaw is a mythologist, storyteller, and wilderness rites-of-passage guide, a teacher of mythic imagination. Should you encounter him at a workshop, you will most likely…
Translated by Lytton Smith Review by Peter Reason This book focuses on two things that are changing beyond recognition in this era of rapid ecological change: Time and Water. Time…
Review by Peter Reason Sam Lee is a renowned song collector, interpreter, and singer of folk songs from Britain and Ireland; he has an abiding interest in wilderness studies and…
Review by Liz Dexter “This place, this land, wasn’t a job or a business: it was everything – past and future, identity and rhythm, daily bread and Sunday rest.” Reading…
Review by Peter Reason Elizabeth Kolbert is a celebrated American journalist, staff writer for the New Yorker. Her work focuses unflinchingly on the ecological challenges of our time, as can…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter “Who are we? Where do we come from? What is Britain, and what does it mean to be British?” This book opens eerily similarly to Sathnam…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Deep time has been a persistent theme in British nonfiction over the last couple of years, showing up in books like Time Song by Julia Blackburn,…
Review by Peter Reason I have been totally absorbed in Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s Thin Places since it arrived in the morning mail and I read in the Preface: ‘The right…
Reviewed by Peter Reason When I was a small boy—and this memory must reach back to around 1950—I played with a wooden puzzle made up of the historic counties of…
By Rebecca Foster The Stubborn Light of Things collects five and a half years’ worth of Melissa Harrison’s monthly Nature Notebook columns for The Times. The book falls into two…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter I greatly enjoyed reading Nancy Campbell’s meditation on the icy places of the world, The Library of Ice. last year, so when I was alerted that…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter Stephen Rutt and his partner move to Dumfries, to a flat near the Solway Firth, just as he’s finishing writing his first (wonderful) book The Seafarers…
Review by Liz Dexter Sarah Maslin Nir is a staff reporter for the New York Times who, by her own admission, has sought out horses wherever she’s travelled to write…
Review by Peter Reason Alastair McIntosh is a Scottish Quaker, peace, community and environmental writer and campaigner, maybe best described as a spiritual activist. He is a fellow and former…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter A book that is in turns entertaining, lyrical and shocking, you won’t think about the countryside – or the rivers – of England in quite the…
Review by Peter Reason Entangled Lives by Merlin Sheldrake has been greeted with much enthusiasm, not least by Robert Macfarlane in the New Yorker. I am sure I am not…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton Ever since I read Findings sometime around a decade ago I’ve viewed anything with Kathleen Jamie’s name attached to it with interest and it’s probably fair…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster The Wainwright Prize longlists for writing on UK nature and global conservation themes were announced in early June and will be whittled down to shortlists on…
Review by Annabel O’Connell is an Irish journalist who won the Wellcome Book Prize for his previous title, To Be a Machine (which I reviewed for Shiny here). His exploration…
Review by Liz Dexter Lev Parikian is a conductor and, more recently, a birdwatcher, and you might have seen or read his book on birds, Why do Birds Suddenly Disappear?…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster When the Wainwright Prize longlists (for writing on UK nature and global conservation themes) were announced in early June, Dara McAnulty broke two records as the…
Review by Terence Jagger I found this book absolutely fascinating. I have always been fairly confident in my abilities as a navigator (though with occasional disasters) but I have always…
Review by Rebecca Foster From the Cape of Good Hope to the Arctic Circle, Dee tracks the spring as it travels north. From first glimpse to last gasp, moving between…
Softback review by Liz Dexter This quietly stunning book will appeal to anyone interested in art, landscape, walking, geology, geography, maps and ancient monuments. Deceptively simple paintings reveal both the…
