It's hard to believe that the Wainwright Prize is only seven years old, such is the excitement that surrounds this book award for nature writing in the UK. In that short period of time, the prize has been awarded to works that have immediately become modern classics, books whose brilliance will endure well into the … Continue reading Irreplaceable: Wainwright Prize Longlist
Francisco Armenteros stood beside a framed map of the Bay of Cádiz. “I remember something that my father once said: It was amazing when you came along the road and you could see so many little mountains of salt, like pyramids of salt.” Dating from the mid-1900s, the map reveals the complex saltscape of the … Continue reading The Moon is the Heart
To listen to an audio version of 'The Wonder of Ordinary Places' click the play button. Many of the world’s landscapes are lost to us. They’ve vanished from our lives, become extinct. But they’ve disappeared not because of urban sprawl or the pressures of tourist development. They haven’t disappeared due to deforestation or a toxic accumulation … Continue reading The Wonder of Ordinary Places
The silence is unprecedented for spring, a time of bird song and insect hymns. It's a silence I've never known in this forest in fact, this wild tangle of silver birch and willow, alders, shrubs and reeds. Even in deepest winter the place resounds with a living quiet, a mute but sensed presence. Instead there is the hollow echo of absence. I have been … Continue reading The Fragile Forest
Julian Hoffman 