Search results for ""Author Robert Macfarlane""

Since his rise to fame in 1967 when his work "The Peregrine" was awarded the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, J A Baker has captured the popular imagination with his vivid descriptions of British landscapes and native wildlife. Compelling, strange and at times both startlingly funny and cruel, Baker's prose is at one with his image as a writer, which has, since the publication of his first work, been characterized as an obsessive recluse.Next to nothing was known about Baker, who died in 1987, until an archive of his materials and those related to him was gifted to the University of Essex in 2013. Only now has it been possible to piece together an accurate view of the life and unpublished work of the man whose writing has been described as "the gold standard for all nature writing" (Mark Cocker), and whose work has influenced naturalists such as Richard Mabey and Simon King, as well as film-makers David Cobham and Werner Herzog.This new book showcases the most compelling parts of the Baker Archive, containing previously unknown elements of his life, many photographs and unpublished poems.It provides an invaluable new insight into both his sensitive and passionate character, and late twentieth century Britian, a country experiencing the throes of agricultural and environmental change.

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This sumptuous and comprehensive evaluation showcases Smith’s 1815 hand-coloured map, A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales, with part of Scotland, and illustrates the story of his career, from apprentice to fossil collector and from his 1799 geological map of Bath and table of strata to his detailed stratigraphical county maps. The introduction places Smith’s work in the context of earlier, concurrent and subsequent ideas regarding the structure and natural processes of the earth. The book is then organized into four geographical sections, each beginning with four sheets from the 1815 strata map, accompanied by related geological cross sections and county maps (1819–24), and is followed by displays of Sowerby’s fossil illustrations (1816–19) organized by strata. Interleaved between the sections are essays by leading academics that explore the aims of Smith’s work, its application in the fields of mining, agriculture, cartography, fossil collecting and hydrology, and its influence on biostratigraphical theories and the science of geology. Concluding the volume are reflections on Smith’s later work as an itinerant geologist and surveyor, plagiarism by his rival – President of the Geological Society, George Bellas Greenough – receipt of the first Wollaston Medal in 1831 in recognition of his achievements, and the influence of his geological mapping and biostratigraphical theories on the sciences, culminating in the establishment of the modern geological timescale.

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Edward Thomas's death in the Second World War robbed the world of a great poet, a fine writer, and a pioneering environmentalist. Published in 1909, The South Country is the happiest of all his books. Lyrical, passionate, acutely sensitive to life in the countryside and the rhythms of the seasons, it brilliantly merges landscape, folk culture and natural history into a record of what Edward Thomas saw and felt as he wandered the old ways of southern England.

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This is the mountaineering yearbook, including feature articles, expedition reports, book reviews, obituaries, arts, history and science.Richly illustrated, the "Alpine Journal" is the world's principal mountaineering yearbook and essential reading for all who love the mountains, particularly those who climb and explore in the Greater Ranges and the Alps. This 2007 edition marks the 150th anniversary of the world famous club.One hundred and fifty years ago, the Alpine Club was born. It was the first mountaineering club in the world and as this 112th volume of the "Alpine Journal" amply demonstrates, it is still going strong.AC members have been climbing across the globe - Simon Yates and Andy Parkin in Tierra del Fuego, Phil Wickens leading an AC expedition in the Pamirs, Malcolm Bass rounding off the club's extended courtship of Haizi Shan in Sichuan, Paul Knott, making the first ascent of South Walsh, highest unclimbed peak in North America. All these stories are told, plus among others, Ian Parnell's eight-day ascent of Kedar Dome's east face, and a year in the life of vagabond climber Nick Bullock.The AC's 150th anniversary is also an occasion for some critical reflection. Doug Scott and Ed Douglas weigh in on ethics and money, Peter Gillman looks at scandals that have soured climbing, and award-winning author Robert Macfarlane considers our ambivalent response to 'the wild'.Ken Wilson, controversialist sans pareil, provides a talking point with a table of the stand-out climbs on the highest peaks and as a glorious reminder of 150 years of British mountaineering's finest moments, we feature the words and images of Gordon Stainforth's acclaimed 'The Crux' exhibition.This is a record of notable climbs, region-by-region, over the past year, reviews, paintings and cartoons by Andy Parkin, 150 photographs, nearly all in colour, and maps.

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