Description
Book SynopsisThe essential and defining new collection of the best British nature writing
‘Tim Dee has brought together a wonderous array of talent for this life-affirming, often magical anthology’ Observer
We are living in the anthropocene – an epoch where everything is being determined by the activities of just one soft-skinned, warm-blooded, short-lived, pedestrian species.
How do we make our way through the ruins that we have made?
This anthology tries to answer this as it explores new and enduring cultural landscapes, in a celebration of local distinctiveness that includes new work from some of our finest writers. We have memories of childhood homes from Adam Thorpe, Marina Warner and Sean O’Brien; we journey with John Burnside to the Arizona desert, with Hugh Brody to the Canadian Arctic; going from Tessa Hadley’s hymn to her London garden to caving in the Mendips with Sean Borodale to shell-collecting on a Suffolk beach with Julia Blackburn.
Helen Macdonald, in her remarkable piece on growing up in a 50-acre walled estate, reflects on our failed stewardship of the planet: ‘I take stock.’ she says, ‘During this sixth extinction, we who may not have time to do anything else must write now what we can, to take stock.’
This is an important, necessary book.
Trade ReviewTim Dee has brought together
a wondrous array of talent for this
life-affirming, often
magical, anthology of nature writing. -- Katharine Norbury * Observer *
This
superb anthology is
a paean to spirit of place in dislocated times... And it is
a trove. -- Barbara Kiser * Nature *
The anthology for me became
a kind of pilgrimage:
Canterbury Tales with Tim Dee leading his merry band to the new Common Ground site in Dorset... This collection about how to live lightly in the world and care deeply for its future… is overwhelmingly
a message of hope. -- Sue Brooks * Caught by the River **Book of the Month** *
In
Ground Work, Tim Dee has collated…
An amazing vein of prose from some of
the best nature and landscape writers around… A
truly excellent book. -- Paul Cheney * Nudge *
Dee, who has the eyes of a birdwatcher, the ears of a radio producer and the soul of a poet, has gathered… this
wonderful anthology. -- Michael Kerr * Daily Telegraph *
