Upland

The first complete history of Britain’s mountains, capturing their beauty, tragedy and the pivotal role of these dramatic landscapes in the nation’s past and future

Britain’s mountains are our grandest and wildest places, their vast openness providing inspiration and escape. But they are now so revered that we overlook the many peoples who long inhabited them and the dramatic history of plunder and dispossession that explains how strangely empty these regions have become.

Derided for centuries as uncivilised wastes, Britain’s uplands in fact hosted richly cultured, distinctive and resilient populations. And yet by the time Romantic poets ‘discovered’ the beauty of these places, the land itself had been denuded by clearances, famine and the needs of sheep and landowners.

From the earliest Brittonic tribes to present-day tensions between farmers, tourists and ecological activists, Upland repopulates Britain’s mountains with the kings and monks, soldiers and poets, engineers and industrialists, visionaries and campaigners who made them what they are.

‘A definitive history of our rocky isles from the most magisterial and far-seeing perspective. Every page holds a fascinating nugget’ GAIA VINCE, author of Nomad Century

‘Completely enthralling and original. Our fragile landscapes have a fine new biographer’ NICHOLAS CRANE, author of Latitude

‘Beautifully written’ LAURA SPINNEY, author of Proto

© Ed Douglas 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026