The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot
About this ebook
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE
The original bestseller from the beloved author of UNDERLAND, LANDMARKS and THE LOST WORDS - Robert Macfarlane travels Britain's ancient paths and discovers the secrets of our beautiful, underappreciated landscape
'The Old Ways confirms Macfarlane's reputation as one of the most eloquent and observant of contemporary writers about nature' Scotland on Sunday
Following the tracks, holloways, drove-roads and sea paths that form part of a vast ancient network of routes criss-crossing the British Isles and beyond, Robert Macfarlane discovers a lost world - a landscape of the feet and the mind, of pilgrimage and ritual, of stories and ghosts; above all of the places and journeys which inspire and inhabit our imaginations.
'Sublime . . . It sets the imagination tingling, laying an irresistible trail for readers to follow' Sunday Times
'Read this and it will be impossible to take an unremarkable walk again' Metro
'He has a rare physical intelligence and affords total immersion in place, elements and the passage of time: wonderful' Antony Gormley
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About the author
Robert Macfarlane's Sunday Times- and New York Times-bestselling books include Is a River Alive?, Underland, Landmarks, The Old Ways, The Wild Places and Mountains of the Mind, as well as a book-length prose-poem, Ness. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, won prizes around the world, and been widely adapted for film, music, theatre, radio and dance. He has also written operas, plays, albums, choral works, and films including River and Mountain, both narrated by Willem Dafoe.
Macfarlane has collaborated closely with artists including Olafur Eliasson and Stanley Donwood. With the artist Jackie Morris he has co-created several internationally bestselling books celebrating the natural world in word and image: The Lost Words, The Lost Spells and The Book of Birds.
In 2017, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E.M. Forster Prize for Literature, and in 2023 in Toronto he was the inaugural winner of the Weston International Award for a body of work in the field of non-fiction. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and is presently working on a graphic novel re-telling of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
