The Wild Places
by Robert Macfarlane
Robert Macfarlane is a Cambridge don, Fellow in English at Emmanuel College, with an artistic eye for wild and lonely places. He was a friend and follower of Roger Deakin, whose last book I reveiwed three weeks ago. Deakin swam in strange waters; Macfarlane sleeps — or spends the night — in unlikely places, such as tentless on the top of Ben Hope, northernmost high mountain in Britain, in a northerly hailstorm in winter. Both of them attempt the heroic task of conveying the genius loci of wild landscapes in words, with little help from pictures or maps.
Dr Macfarlane takes the reader to ‘wild places’ all over Great Britain, with a couple in Ireland: not just the obvious like Rannoch Moor, or the well-known like Coruisk on Skye, but many lesser wild places like the holloways, the sunken roads that ‘affright the ladies’ and ‘make timid horsemen shudder’ and form an underground network in Dorset.
Get Britain's best politics newsletters
Register to get The Spectator's insight and opinion straight to your inbox. You can then read two free articles each week.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in