Robert Macfarlane Popular Books
Robert Macfarlane Biography & Facts
Robert Macfarlane (born 15 August 1976) is a British writer and Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He is best known for his books on landscape, nature, place, people and language, which include The Old Ways (2012), Landmarks (2015), The Lost Words (2017) and Underland (2019). In 2017 he received The E. M. Forster Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is married to professor of modern Chinese history and literature Julia Lovell. Early life and education Macfarlane was born in Halam, Nottinghamshire, and attended Nottingham High School. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and Magdalen College, Oxford. He began a PhD at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 2000, and in 2001 was elected a Fellow of the college. Family His father John Macfarlane is a respiratory physician who co-authored the CURB-65 score of pneumonia in 2003. His brother James is also a consultant physician in respiratory medicine. He is married to Julia Lovell, and has three children. Books Macfarlane's first book, Mountains of the Mind, was published in 2003 and won the Guardian First Book Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. It was shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. It is an account of the development of Western attitudes to mountains and precipitous landscapes, and takes its title from a line by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. The book asks why people, including Macfarlane, are drawn to mountains despite their obvious dangers, and examines the powerful and sometimes fatal hold that mountains can come to have over the imagination. The Irish Times described the book as "a new kind of exploration writing, perhaps even the birth of a new genre, which demands a new category of its own." The Wild Places was published in September 2007, and describes a series of journeys made in search of the wildness that remains in Britain and Ireland. The book won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature, the Scottish Arts Council Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award, and the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Festival, North America's equivalent of the Boardman Tasker Prize. It became a best-seller in Britain and The Netherlands, and was shortlisted for six further prizes, including the Dolman Best Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and North America's Orion Book Award, a prize founded "to recognize books that deepen our connection to the natural world, present new ideas about our relationship with nature, and achieve excellence in writing." The Wild Places was adapted for television by the BBC as an episode of the BBC Two Natural World series broadcast in February 2010; the film later won a Wildscreen Award. The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot, the third in the "loose trilogy of books about landscape and the human heart" begun by Mountains of the Mind and The Wild Places, was published in June 2012. The book describes the years Macfarlane spent following "old ways" (pilgrimage paths, sea-roads, prehistoric trackways, ancient rights of way) in south-east England, north-west Scotland, Spain, Sichuan and Palestine. Its guiding spirit is the early-twentieth-century writer and poet, Edward Thomas, and its chief subject is the reciprocal shaping of people and place. The Old Ways was in the bestseller lists for six months. It was acclaimed as a "tour de force" by William Dalrymple in The Observer. It was chosen as Book of the Year by John Banville, Philip Pullman, Jan Morris, John Gray, Antony Beevor, and Dan Stevens among others. In the UK, it was joint winner of the Dolman Prize for Travel Writing, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize (the "non-fiction Booker"), the Jan Michalski Prize for World Literature, the Duff Cooper Prize for Non-Fiction, the Warwick Prize for Writing, the Waterstones Book of the Year, and three other prizes. In the US, it was shortlisted for the Orion Book Award. Landmarks, a book that celebrates and defends the language of landscape, was published in the UK in March 2015. A version of its first chapter, published in The Guardian as The Word-Hoard, went viral, and the book became a Sunday Times number one bestseller. It was shortlisted for The Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. Landmarks is described on the cover as "a field guide to the literature of nature, and a vast glossary collecting thousands of the remarkable terms used in dozens of the languages and dialects of Britain and Ireland to describe and denote aspects of terrain, weather, and nature". Each of the book's chapters explores the landscapes and style of a writer or writers, as Macfarlane travels to meet farmers, sailors, walkers, glossarians, artists, poets and others who have developed intense and committing relationships with their chosen places. The chapter of the book concerning Nan Shepherd and the Cairngorm mountains was adapted for television by BBC4 and BBC Scotland. Macfarlane's detailed writing style, and his frequent references to dialect vocabulary, were satirised in a February 2016 edition of Private Eye by Craig Brown in the magazine's regular "Diary" feature. Landmarks was published in the US in August 2016. It was described by Tom Shippey in The Wall Street Journal as a book that "teaches us to love our world, even the parts of it that we have neglected. Mr Macfarlane is the great nature writer, and nature poet, of this generation." In May 2016 Macfarlane published The Gifts of Reading, a short book about gifts, stories and the unexpected consequences of generosity. All work for the book was given for free, and all moneys raised were donated to MOAS, the Migrant Offshore Aid Station, to save refugee lives. With the artist Jackie Morris, Macfarlane published The Lost Words: A Spell Book in October 2017. The book became what the Guardian called 'a cultural phenomenon', winning Children's Book of the Year at the British Book Awards jointly with The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. The "lost" words of the book's title are twenty of the names for everyday nature—from "Acorn" through to "Wren" by way of "Bluebell", "Kingfisher", "Lark" and "Otter"—that were controversially dropped from inclusion in the Oxford Junior Dictionary due to under-use by children. Grassroots campaigns sprang up to raise money to place copies of the book in every primary and special school in all of Scotland, half of England and a quarter of Wales. Funds were also raised to place a copy in every hospice in Britain. The book is used by charities and carers working with dementia sufferers, refugees, survivors of domestic abuse, childhood cancer patients, and people in terminal care. It has been adapted for dance, outdoor theatre, choral music and classical music. In 2018 the new Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital at Stanmore opened its new building with four levels decorated with art and poems from The Lost Wo.... Discover the Robert Macfarlane popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Robert Macfarlane books.
Best Seller Robert Macfarlane Books of 2024
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We Belong to Gaia
James LovelockIn twenty short books, Penguin brings you the classics of the environmental movement.James Lovelock's We Belong to Gaia draws on decades of wisdom to lay out the history of our rem...
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The Man Who Planted Trees
Jean Giono & Barbara Bray‘A book for children from 8 to 80. I love the humanity of this story and how one man’s efforts can change the future for so many. It’s a real message of hope.’ Michael MorpurgoDisc...
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Experiments on Reality
Tim RobinsonLong recognized as perhaps the greatest nonfiction writer at work in Ireland, for his vast, polymathic accounts of nature and culture in the Aran Islands and Connemara, Tim Robinso...
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The Old Ways
Robert MacfarlaneFrom the acclaimed author of The Wild Places and Underland, an exploration of walking and thinkingIn this exquisitely written book, Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge, E...
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Dragonflies
Philip Corbet & Stephen BrooksDragonflies are among the most ancient of living creatures – few insect groups fascinate as much or are more immediately recognisable.In this seminal new work, Philip Corbet and St...
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Mountains of the Mind
Robert MacfarlaneThe basis for the new documentary film, Mountain: A Breathtaking Voyage into the Extreme. Combining accounts of legendary mountain ascents with vivid descriptions of his own fora...
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Footnotes
Peter FiennesThrough past and present, the country and the city, Peter Fiennes takes a literary journey through the British Isles‘As enjoyable a guide to the relationship of writers to the land...
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My Garden World
Monty DonTHE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER & BEST GARDENING BOOKS OF 2020 Sunday Times'Every page a joy' NIGEL SLATER'From a very early age I loved the countryside as much as any garden and ...
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The Most Dammed Country in the World
Dai QingIn twenty short books, Penguin brings you the classics of the environmental movement.The courageous, unflinching speeches and writings collected in The Most Dammed Country in the W...
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The Wisdom of Wolves
Elli H. Radinger'ENCHANTING' MAIL ON SUNDAY They care for their elderly, play with their kids, and always put family first. Can we all learn something from the wisdom of wolves? In this unforge...
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Woodlands
Oliver RackhamThe 100th volume of the prestigious New Naturalist series, written by one of Britain's bestknown naturalists, explores the significance and history of woodlands on the British land...
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The Consolation of Nature
Michael McCarthy, Jeremy Mynott & Peter MarrenONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S BEST NATURE BOOKS OF 2020SHORTLISTED FOR THE RICHARD JEFFERIES SOCIETY & WHITE HORSE BOOKSHOP LITERARY PRIZE'Lovely: full of fascinating detail and anecdo...
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Wild Fell
Lee Schofield'I found myself turning the pages with an inward leap of joy' Isabella TreeWINNER of the Richard Jefferies Award for Nature WritingShortlisted for the James Cropper Wainwright Pri...
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How To Save Our Planet
Mark A. Maslin'Punchy and to the point. No beating around the bush. This brilliant book contains all the information we need to have in our back pocket in order to move forward' Christiana Figue...
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Plant Disease
David Ingram & Noel RobertsonPlant Disease covers all aspects of diseases of plants growing in the wild or likely to be encountered on cultivated plants in farm, forest and garden. This edition is exclusive to...
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Galloway and the Borders
Derek RatcliffeAnother volume in the widelyread New Naturalist series, this book is an indepth study of the natural developments and history of Galloway and surrounding areas.Often overlooked due...
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Postcards to Europe
Various AuthorsThis is not a book about politics. It is a book about what makes us British, and what makes us European.Spend time with some of your favourite writers and artists in this truly uni...
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The Gifts of Reading
Robert Macfarlane, William Boyd, Candice Carty-Williams, Chigozie Obioma, Philip Pullman, Imtiaz Dharker, Roddy Doyle, Pico Iyer, Andy Miller, Jackie Morris, Jan Morris, Sisonke Msimang, Dina Nayeri, Michael Ondaatje, David Pilling, Max Porter, Alice Pung, Jancis Robinson, SF Said, Madeleine Thien, Salley Vickers, John Wood & Markus ZusakWith contributions by: William Boyd, Candice CartyWilliams, Imtiaz Dharker, Roddy Doyle, Pico Iyer, Robert Macfarlane, Andy Miller, Jackie Morris, Jan Morris, Sisonke Msimang, Dina...
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Natural History in the Highlands and Islands
F. Fraser DarlingThe Highlands and Islands of Scotland are rugged moorland, alpine mountains and jagged coast with remarkable natural history. This edition is exclusive to newnaturalists.comThe Hig...
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Tales of a Country Parish
Colin Heber-Percy'A delightful book from a gentle, generous spirit.' SIMON RUSSELL BEALE'Philosophical speculation, country lore, rock music, spiritual exploration, erudite and beautifully written...
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The Wild Places
Robert MacfarlaneFrom 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...
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Plant Pests
David V. AlfordEver since man first cultivated plants and grew crops, insects, mites and other creatures have risen to prominence as pests, but it is only throughout the last two centuries that w...
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Sleeping Beauties
Andreas WagnerLife innovates constantly, producing perfectly adapted species – but there’s a catch. A TIMES AND TELEGRAPH BEST BOOK OF 2023'Hopeful and fascinating.' THE TIMESMany animals and pl...
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The Peregrine
J. A. BakerJ. A. Baker’s extraordinary classic of British nature writingDespite the association of peregrines with the wild, outer reaches of the British Isles, The Peregrine is set on the fl...
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The House Without Windows
Barbara Newhall FollettEscape into the wild from the comfort of your own home this winter, with a dazzling lost classic of nature writing... Eepersip is a girl with the wild in her heart. She does not wa...
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Moths
Mike MajerusMoths provides a comprehensive account of the diverse natural history of these fascinating and popular insects. This edition is exclusive to newnaturalists.comAnother volume in the...
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Plant Galls
Margaret RedfernA muchneeded study on plant galls – growths on plants formed of plant tissue that are caused by other organisms.Most naturalists have come across oak apples, robin’s pincushions, m...
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Steeple Chasing
Peter Ross'Never have the joys of exploring the churches and cathedrals of this country been so vividly conveyed as they are in this engaging and elegiac book.' New Statesman BOOK OF THE YE...
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Next to Nature
Ronald Blythe'All the charm, wonder, eccentricity and vigour of country life is here in these pages, and told with such engaging directness, detail and colour . . . Bliss' STEPHEN FRY'A capacio...
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Life on the Mississippi
Rinker BuckNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Audacious…Life on the Mississippi sparkles.” The Wall Street Journal “A rich mix of history, reporting, and personal introspection.” St. Louis PostDisp...
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History of the World in 100 Animals
Simon Barnes'So, so good! ... More gems than a pirate's chest ... science, art, history, culture it's epic and mammoth, a repository of all our truths through their lives' Chris PackhamA...
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Rooted
Sarah LangfordSHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING'An honest look at the farming life today. Raw, earthy and inspiring' Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment'A beautiful...
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Hidden City
Karl WhitneyKarl Whitney's Hidden City: a brilliant portrait of DublinDublin is a city much visited and deeply mythologized. In Hidden City, Karl Whitney who has been described by Gorse as 'D...
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Woodsman
Ben LawBen Law’s incredible sense of the land and his respect for age old traditions offers a wonderful insight into the life of Prickly Nut Wood.Having travelled to Papua New Guinea and ...
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Sea-Birds
James Fisher & R. M. LockleySeaBirds introduces us to the seabirds of the North Atlantic, an ocean in which about half the world seabird species have been seen at one time or another. This edition is exclusiv...
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No Picnic on Mount Kenya
Felice BenuzziA rediscovered mountaineering classic and the extraordinary true story of a daring escape up Mount Kenya by three prisoners of war.When the clouds covering Mount Kenya part one mor...
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Walden
Henry David ThoreauWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BENJAMIN MARKOVITSIn 1845 Thoreau, a Harvardeducated 28yearold, went to live by himself in the woods in Massachusetts. He stayed for over two years, living ...
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The Way Home
Mark BoyleAn honest, radical and moving account of life off the grid. It was 11pm when I checked my email for the last time and turned off my phone for what I hoped would be forever.No runni...
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Swansong
Kerry Andrew‘Swansong is the real thing, right from the start: spiky, strange and contemporary, but always with a dark undertow of myth and folklore tugging at its telling…this is a brilliant ...
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Cry of the Wild
Charles Foster'Evocative and beautifully written, it's a deeply immersive read' Observer'Charles Foster is the most original voice in nature writing today funny, urgent, poetic, philosophical a...
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The Company of Trees
Thomas Pakenham'The master. Puts all other modern treewriters in the shade' John LewisStempel, author of MeadowlandThomas Pakenham is an indefatigable champion of trees. In The Company of Trees h...
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Bird Migration
Ian NewtonThe phenomenon of bird migration has fascinated people from time immemorial. The arrivals and departures of different species marked the seasons, heralding spring and autumn, and p...
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Gamish
Edward RossShortlisted for the British Book Design and Production Award for Graphic Novels'A love letter to gaming in all its forms from board games, to roleplay, to virtual reality and vide...