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Cédric Sapin-Defour

Having a dog as company makes nothing feel excessive – not time or space. It's not even about passing time, but being of it. 
 
A tiny ad in a local newspaper catches Cédric Sapin-Defour’s eye: a litter of Bernese Mountain Dog puppies need homes. A lonely, single, sports teacher and mountain climber in the French Alps, Cédric visits the dogs and immediately falls for the puppy with a blue collar. 
 
Named Ubac, French for the north side of the mountain – the rainy, cloudy slope – the puppy quickly upends Cédric’s life. They go on hikes together, taking to the hills and exploring, forging a bond that brings joy and a sense of fulfillment and adventure. They brave the world together, hate to be apart, crave the mountains and the natural world; they protect each other. 
 
Over the course of thirteen years, their pack expands to include Mathilde, Cédric’s wife, and more dogs. Ubac and Me is an intimate meditation on a joyous life lived too fast, the aching pain of separation, and the transformative effect of unconditional love. A dog named for the rainy side of the mountain is an inspiring lesson in how walking the rocky, cloudy hills together can bring the greatest light, the sunniest joys, even if the shared journey is unbearably short. 
 
 
‘Not just a tribute to the love humans feel for their pets but also a means of voicing the deep grief that can be felt after a dog’s death, when all that is left is a collar and hairs, and the house seems too big without them.’ Guardian 
 
Ubac and Me has been a surprise bestseller and word-of-mouth sensation in France, championed by indie booksellers, selling 400,000 copies. 
 
Translated by Adriana Hunter.

Ubac and Me

A Life of Love and Adventure With a French Mountain Dog

Haruki Murakami

'Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional' 
 
The must-read gift for every runner: a compelling meditation on the power of running and a fascinating insight into the life of this internationally bestselling writer. 
 
In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later, he'd completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and on his writing. 
 
Equal parts travelogue, training log and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and settings ranging from Tokyo's Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston. 
 
By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, this is a must-read for fans of this masterful yet private writer as well as for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in distance running. 
 
*Murakami's new book Novelist as a Vocation is available now* 
 
'There can never have been a book quite like this memoir of running and writing before. In its self-contained way, it's nothing less than an inspiration' Evening Standard 
 
'Hugely enjoyable...You don't have to have run a marathon to be captivated' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'Comical, charming and philosophical...an excellent memoir' GQ

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Emma Hooper

I've gone. I've never seen the water, so I've gone there. I will try to remember to come back. 
 
Etta's greatest unfulfilled wish, living in the rolling farmland of Saskatchewan, is to see the sea. And so, at the age of eighty-two she gets up very early one morning, takes a rifle, some chocolate, and her best boots, and begins walking the 2,000 miles to water. 
 
Meanwhile her husband Otto waits patiently at home, left only with his memories. Their neighbour Russell remembers too, but differently - and he still loves Etta as much as he did more than fifty years ago, before she married Otto.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James

Simon Yates

Simon Yates is 'the one who cut the rope' in Joe Simpson's award-winning account of their epic struggle for survival in Touching the Void. Afterwards, Yates continued mountaineering on the hardest routes. Perhaps the most testing of all was one of the world's largest vertical rockfaces, the 4, 000-ft East Face of the Central Tower of Paine in Chile. Battered by ferocious storms and almost crippled with fear just below the summit, Yates and his three companions are forced into a nightmare retreat. After resting in a nearby town, they return to complete the climb, but Yates knows he still has to face one of life's greatest challenges...

Against The Wall

William Fotheringham

The Paris-Roubaix Classic. 273 kilometres of torment across the bone-crunching pavé of northern France. 
In 1976 the celebrated Danish film director, Jørgen Leth, embarked on an ambitious project to capture the spirit of this spectacular and cruel one-day race. The resulting film, A Sunday in Hell, has become the most admired cycling documentary of all time, and its revolutionary camera and sound techniques have forever changed the way the sport is viewed on screen. 
The film centres around legends including Eddie Merkx, Roger De Vlaeminck, Freddie Maertens and Francesco Moser, capturing not just their experiences from the saddle, but also the mood of a nation and its relationship with the most punishing of the Spring Classics. 
Sunday in Hell looks at the men, the method and the places behind the film. It observes the creativity of Leth and his collaborators, explores the lives of riders such as unlikely winner Marc Demeyer and revisits locations which have changed little to this day.

Sunday in Hell

Behind the Lens of the Greatest Cycling Film of All Time

Raynor Winn

Nature holds the answers for Raynor and her husband Moth. After walking 630 homeless miles along The Salt Path, living on the windswept and wild English coastline; the cliffs, the sky and the chalky earth now feel like their home. 
 
Moth has a terminal diagnosis, but against all medical odds, he seems revitalised in nature. Together on the wild coastal path, with their feet firmly rooted outdoors, they discover that anything is possible. 
 
Now life beyond the Salt Path awaits and they come back to four walls, but the sense of home is illusive and returning to normality is proving difficult - until an incredible gesture by someone who reads their story changes everything. 
 
A chance to breathe life back into a beautiful farmhouse nestled deep in the Cornish hills; rewilding the land and returning nature to its hedgerows, becomes their saving grace and their new path to follow. 
 
The Wild Silence is a story of hope triumphing over despair, of lifelong love prevailing over everything. It is a luminous account of the human spirit's instinctive connection to nature, and how vital it is for us all.

The Wild Silence

Susan Sallis

From the pen of multi-million copy seller and Sunday Times bestselling author Susan Sallis comes a heart-warming and emotional novel of secrets, loss and final redemption that will stay with you long after you finish the last page. Readers of Rosamunde Pilcher, Maeve Binchy and Fiona Valpy will simply love The Path to the Lake. 
 
***************************************** 
IS SHE RUNNING AWAY FROM THE SECRETS OF HER PAST? 
 
Viv's marriage to David is not a conventional one, but when he dies - in an accident for which she blames herself - it is as if her whole world had collapses around her. She escapes by running, mainly around the nearby lake, which was once a popular place of recreation but is now desolate and deserted. It becomes both her refuge and her dread. 
 
But through the misery she makes some unexpected friends - a couple in the village whose family need her as much as she needs them. 
 
And gradually, as a new life opens up, she is able confront terrible secrets from her past which have haunted her and which can now be laid to rest...

The Path to the Lake

a moving, uplifting and inspiring novel from bestselling author Susan Sallis

Joe Simpson

Joe Simpson has experienced a life filled with adventure but marred by death. He has endured the painful attrition of climbing friends in accidents, calling into question the perilously exhilarating activity to which he has devoted his life. Probability is inexorably closing in. The tragic loss of a close friend forces a momentous decision upon him. It is time to turn his back on the mountains that he has loved. Never more alive than when most at risk, he has come to see a last climb on the hooded, mile-high North Face of the Eiger as the cathartic finale. 
 
In a narrative which takes the reader through extreme experiences, from an avalanche in Bolivia, ice-climbing in the Alps and Colorado and paragliding in Spain - before his final confrontation with the Eiger - Simpson reveals the inner truth of climbing, exploring both the power of the mind and the frailties of the body. The subject of his new book is the siren song of fear and his struggle to come to terms with it.

The Beckoning Silence

As her hand slips from his grip, Patrick's life is shattered, forever changed... 
 
Trapped high on a high mountain face during the worst storm in living memory, a young man is forced to fight the brutal winter for his life - moments after his beloved wife is swept away forever across the ice. Haunted by grief and guilt, Patrick keeps vigil on the mountain for 25 years, in the hope that one day it will release his devastating secret.

The Sound of Gravity

Jens Voigt

Push until it hurts, then push some more 
 
Even by the standards of a sport that requires enormous stamina and capacity for suffering, Jens Voigt is in a class on his own. Beloved by cycling fans for his madcap one-man breakaways as much as his sense of humour and quotable catchphrases, Jens is one of the most popular personalities in cycling. 
 
Jens was born near Hamburg, and came up through the East German system before the Wall came down. He got into the national team through the German army, before signing for his first big team. In many ways he is cycling’s anti-star; despite arguably spending more time at the front of the Tour de France than any other rider he has only worn the yellow jersey twice as his efforts have always been in the service of others. 
 
Jens embodies the best of cycling’s qualities – loyalty to his team, sacrifice, and devotion to the sport. He says, ‘I’m not a head person, I’m more of a heart and guts guy. That’s how I race.’ Shut Up Legs is a funny, insightful and entertaining look at the tough realities of professional cycling, told in Jens’s trademark irreverent and inimitable style.

Shut up Legs!

My Wild Ride On and Off the Bike

Raynor knows that her husband Moth's health is declining, getting worse by the day. She knows of only one cure. It worked once before. But will he - can he? - set out with her on another healing walk? 
 
Being one with nature saved them in their darkest hour and their hope is that it can work its magic again. As they set out on their incredible thousand-mile journey back to the familiar shores of the South West Coast Path, Raynor and Moth map the landscape of an island nation facing an uncertain path ahead.

Landlines

Tim Dee

'A joyful, poetic hymn to spring... Dee is one of our greatest living nature writers' Observer 
 
One December, in midsummer South Africa, Tim Dee was watching swallows. They were at home there, but the same birds would soon begin journeying north to Europe, where their arrival marks the beginning of spring. 
 
 Greenery recounts how Tim Dee tries to follow the season and its migratory birds, making remarkable journeys in the Sahara, the Straits of Gibraltar, Sicily, Britain, and finally by the shores of the Arctic Ocean in northern Scandinavia. On each adventure, he is in step with the very best days of the year - the time of song and nests and eggs, of buds and blossoms and leafing. 
 
'A masterpiece... I can't imagine I'll ever stop thinking about it' Max Porter 
 
'Fascinating, horizon-expanding, life-enhancing' Lucy Jones, author of Losing Eden

Greenery

Journeying with the Spring from Southern Africa to the Arctic

Journeys in Springtime

Paolo Cognetti

The remote alpine village of Fontana Fredda lives by the seasons. These quiet, complex rhythms appeal to Fausto, who has left the city of Milan behind, and with it his relationship. He takes a job as chef in a little restaurant and entrusts himself to new beginnings. 
 
Silvia is also seeking change: her sights are on the glaciers where, she has read, climbing a thousand metres towards the sky is equivalent to travelling ten times the same distance to the north. She is in search of her personal North Pole. 
 
When Fausto and Silvia meet one night, their story begins: a tender story of love and renewal; of the community that sustains them; and of lives humbled by the implacable strength and beauty of the mountains. 
 
As intimate in focus as it is epic in scope, The Lovers is a luminous meditation on our quest to understand our place in one another's lives, and in the magnificence of the world around us.

The Lovers

Nick Rosen

Off-grid: a place, building or person without mains water or power. 
 Static or mobile - in a house or a hut, a boat or a camper van - to live off-grid is all about loosending the ties that bind us to teh fmailiar world of commuting, mortgages, no time and fast food, in order to rediscover our place in the natural world. 
 Complete with camper van, Nick sets off around the UK to find off-grid heaven and meet people who are living the dream. Along the way he runs into backpackers and businessmen, radical hermits and right-wing survivalists - and plenty of ordinary working-parent families too. 
 Sincere but irreverent, this is Nick's guide to avoiding pitfalls, to finding solutions (and some brilliant gadgets) as he strives to perfect the skills of this practical, freewheeling kind of self-sufficiency. 
 'Timely and highly readable' Sunday Telegraph 
 ' Nick Rosen has caught the zeitgeist.' The Times

How to Live Off-Grid

Ned Boulting

‘British cyclist. It used to be an oxymoron, a sort of silliness. Like French Cricket’ 
 
 Ned Boulting has noticed something. It’s to do with bikes. They’re everywhere. And so are their riders. Some of these riders seem to be sporting sideburns and a few of them are winning things. Big things. Now Ned wants to know how on earth it came to this. And what, exactly is 'this'. 
 
 In On the Road Bike, Ned Boulting asks how Britain became so obsessed with cycling. His journey takes him from the velodrome at Herne Hill to the Tour of Britain at Stoke-on-Trent via Bradley Wiggins, Chris Boardman, David Millar (and David’s mum), Ken Livingstone, both Tommy Godwins, Gary Kemp (yes, him from Spandau Ballet) and many, many more. The result is an amusing and personal exploration of the austere, nutty soul of British cycling. 
 
'Funny, fascinating and frequently touching ... will be enjoyed by anyone with even a passing interest in cycling. No bib shorts required' Guardian

On the Road Bike

The Search For a Nation’s Cycling Soul

Clare Balding

In Clare Balding's family, walking just took too long - she galloped through the countryside and she galloped through life. 
 
Then, starting out in her broadcasting career, she was asked to present a series discovering the glories of Britain and Ireland. Clare caught the walking bug. 
 
Now she wants her family to share some of that pleasure. She and her brother Andrew are determined to conquer the Wayfarer's Walk, a 71 mile route. What could possibly go wrong? 
 
This is a story of paths and people, of (mis)adventures, and of life-changing rambles. This is Clare's story of walking home.

Walking Home

Great British Adventures . . . and Other Rambles

My Family and Other Rambles

Anne Mustoe

When ex-headmistress Anne Mustoe gave up her job, bought a bike and took to the road, she couldn't even mend a puncture. 12,000 miles and 15 months later, she was home. 
 
Her epic solo journey took her around the world, through Europe, India, the Far East and the United States. From Thessaloniki to Uttar Pradesh, from Chumphon to Singapore, she faced downpours, blizzards and blistering deserts, political turmoil and amorous waiters - alternated with great kindness from strangers along the way. 
 
A Bike Ride is the first in the series of Anne Mustoe's successful and inspiring travelogues.

A Bike Ride

12,000 miles around the world

Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years is terminally ill, the couple lose their home and their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and Cornwall. 
 
They have almost no money for food or shelter and must carry only the essentials for survival on their backs as they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea and sky. Yet through every step, every encounter, and every test along the way, their walk becomes a remarkable journey. 
 
The Salt Path is an unflinchingly honest, inspiring and life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world. Ultimately, it is a portrayal of home, and how it can be lost, rebuilt, and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways

The Salt Path

Rachel Hewitt

'Heartfelt, passionate, infuriating and often devastating, this book will inspire you to fight for your right to tread your own path' CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ, author of Invisible Women 
 
When Rachel loses five family members in five months, grief magnifies other absences. Running across moors and mountains used to help her feel at home in her body but now feels fraught with danger. 
 
Rachel goes in search of a new family: the foremothers who blazed a trail at the dawn of outdoor sport. She discovers Lizzie Le Blond who scaled the Alps in woollen skirts and photographed fearless women climbing, skating and tobogganing at breakneck speeds. Telling Lizzie's story alongside her own, Rachel runs her way from bereavement to belonging, inspired by the tenacious women, past and present, who insist that breaking boundaries outdoors is, and always has been, in her nature. 
 
‘A book of limitless curiosity and eloquent passion’ The Times

In Her Nature

How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors

Don Shaw

Freddy, Phil and Don are three grumpy old men, travelling at various speeds in the slow lane of retirement, at a loss to understand the mad modern world around them. 
 
Their chosen method of escape from all this is a shared weekly hike in the Peak District, come gale, hail, snow or torrential rain. They pass the time bumping into colourful and eccentric locals, but their real passion is bickering among themselves. Not only about the right path to take, but also about where they're all going at the fag end of life. Phil likes to dash up hills trying to beat his personal best, while Freddy plots how to sabotage him - teasing him at leisure and asking deep and difficult questions. Stuck in the middle, Don's only ambition is to stop the squabbling getting out of hand long enough to find a nice pub for lunch. 
 
As warm as the wind is cold, as dry as the lashing rain is wet, The Hike is a hilarious tale of bum-warmers, crayfish-fanciers, East German Trabant enthusiasts, bodger philosophers, sticky ginger cake, gorgeous countryside and the subtle art of 'onedownmanship'.

The Hike

Gabriel Tallent

Dan and Tamma are two Californian teenagers growing up dirt poor in the shadows of the Joshua Tree National Park, one of the world’s great rock climbing meccas. Their mothers had once been teenage waitresses and best friends until their paths diverged. Now Dan’s mother spends her days locked in her room, her dreams squandered and all her hopes pinned on getting her precociously clever son out of town and away to university. 
 
Tamma’s mother holds no such ambition for her mouthy, queer, truant-playing, snaggle-toothed daughter, who everyone but Dan believes to be a troublemaker and no-hoper. But Tamma and Dan are fuelled by dreams of becoming legendary rock climbers, of devoting their lives to summiting the most challenging climbs and defying all the expectations, both good and bad, that others have for them. 
 
Climbing at sun-up, on cliff faces that test their bodies to the limit, is where their friendship is forged. It’s also the one thing that gives them hope. But as their final year of high school unfolds and their climbs become ever more dangerous, and their home lives ever more extreme, it’s inevitable that something is going to snap...

Crux

Mark Wallington

From the author of the bestselling 500 Mile Walkies, this is the true story of one man and his bike ... 
 
It was a cold, bleak, British summer morning when intrepid Mark set out to travel the seventeen-hundred miles to Lapland on his bicycle. The land of reindeer nomads and the Midnight Sun had him under its spell. 
 
Suitably equipped with a new locknut A and pivot bolt B, a compass, a pair of sunglasses with only one lens and a Norwegian phrasebook, he was soon to discover the joys of Central Milton Keynes, win a marathon he never ran in Brassington, become stranded on the Yorkshire Dales, pick raspberries in Northumbria and finally catch a train from Newcastle - back to London! 
 
His dreams of obtaining a genuine reindeer hatstand were shattered forever!

Destination Lapland

Graham Bowley

The summit of K2, 1 August 2008. An exhausted band of climbers pump their fists into the clear blue sky - joining the elite who have conquered the world's most lethal mountain. But as they celebrate, far below them an ice shelf collapses and sweeps away their ropes. They don't know it yet, but they will be forced to descend into the blackness with no lines. Of the thirty who set out, eleven will never make it back. 
 
No Way Down weaves a tale of human courage, folly, survival and devastating loss. The stories are heart-wrenching: the young married couple whose rope was torn apart by an avalanche, sending the husband to his death; the 61-year-old Frenchman who called his family from near the summit to say he wouldn't make it home. So what drove them to try to conquer this elusive peak? And what went wrong that fateful day?

No Way Down

Life and Death on K2

When Simon Yates cut the rope and sent his friend plummeting to an ordeal few mountaineers can have contemplated, the outcome was totally unpredictable. That Joe Simpson survived is a revelation of the power of the human spirit to overcome fear, pain and deprivation of almost unimaginable intensity. He did not expect to live it all over again - more than once. 
 
The first test was to write his award-winning account of the ordeal in Touching the Void. That meant dragging the terrifying experience out of the deeper shadows of his memory. Then, another fall in the Himalayas crippled and almost broke him. Yet he felt forced to test his nerve again and struggled on crutches to 20,000 feet on Pumori, near Everest. On his descent he heard that a young first-time climber had been killed by a chance rockfall. What sense could he make now of this game of ghosts that had claimed the lives of so many of his friends. 
 
This extraordinary memoir is Joe Simpson's attempt to find catharsis and some explanation for the urge he felt since childhood to measure fear and embrace the unknown.

This Game Of Ghosts

Courtney Conley

Milica McDowell

Walking isn’t just a leisurely activity or a form of personal transportation. Its far-reaching benefits – not just for physical health, but for mental clarity and emotional well-being, creativity and social connection – make it a vital component of human existence, one that is as essential as breathing and sleeping. 
 
In this book, world-renowned foot and gait specialist, Courtney Conley, and physiotherapist, Milica McDowell, transform our understanding of the importance of one of the simplest and most accessible forms of movement. Drawing on cutting-edge research, evolutionary biology and real-life stories from their practice, they show that walking is one of our most powerful and under-prescribed medicines: revealing why walking speed can predict overall health; how the risk of falls, which has a direct impact on longevity, can be measured by your foot health; and how even the shortest of walks can have profound healing effects. 
 
Filled with practical advice, from simple tips to help with lower back pain, to customizable programs to enhance mobility and fitness, this book is an essential guide to transforming your physical – and mental – health, from the ground up.

Walk

Your Life Depends On It

Sara Wheeler

Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1886-1959) was one of the youngest members of Captain Scott's final expedition to the Antarctic. Cherry undertook an epic journey in the Antarctic winter to collect the eggs of the Emperor penguin. The temperature fell to seventy below, it was dark all the time, his teeth shattered in the cold and the tent blew away. 'But we kept our tempers,' Cherry wrote, 'even with God.' 
 
After serving in the First War Cherry was invalided home, and with the zealous encouragement of his neighbour Bernard Shaw he wrote a masterpiece. In The Worst Journey in the World Cherry transformed tragedy and grief into something fine. But as the years unravelled he faced a terrible struggle against depression, breakdown and despair, haunted by the possibility that he could have saved Scott and his companions. 
 
This is the first biography of Cherry. Sara Wheeler, who has travelled extensively in the Antarctic, has had unrestricted access to new material and the full co-operation of Cherry's family.

Cherry

A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard

Shane O'Mara

'Informative and persuasive enough to rouse the most ardent couch pototo' New Scientist 
 
 
Walking upright on two feet is a uniquely human skill. It defines us as a species. 
 
It enabled us to walk out of Africa and to spread as far as Alaska and Australia. It freed our hands and freed our minds. We put one foot in front of the other without thinking – yet how many of us know how we do that, or appreciate the advantages it gives us? In this hymn to walking, neuroscientist Shane O’Mara invites us to marvel at the benefits it confers on our bodies and minds, and urges us to appreciate – and exercise – our miraculous ability. 
 
SUNDAY INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE WEEK 
 
AGreatRead and ArgosyBooks BOOK OF THE MONTH

In Praise of Walking

The new science of how we walk and why it’s good for us

Andy Kirkpatrick

WINNER OF THE BOARDMAN TASKER PRIZE 2008 
 
Metro magazine recently wrote that Andy Kirkpatrick makes Ray Mears look like Paris Hilton. Words like boldness, adventure and risk were surely coined especially for him. As one of the world's most accomplished mountaineers and big-wall climbers, he goes vertically where other climbers (to say nothing of the general public) fear to tread. 
 
For the first time, this cult hero of vertical rock has written a book, in which his thirteen-day ascent of Reticent Wall on El Capitan in California - the hardest big-wall climb ever soloed by a Briton - frames a challenging autobiography. From childhood on a grim inner-city housing estate in Hull, the story moves through horrific encounters and unique athletic achievements at the extremes of the earth. As he writes, 'Climbs like this make no sense ... the chances of dying on the route are high.' Yet Andy, in his thirties with young children, has everything to live for. This is the paradox at the heart of the story. 
 
This book - by turns gut-wrenching, entertaining and challenging - appeals to the adventurer in all of us.

Psychovertical

Rob Cowen

ONE OF BRITAIN'S FAVOURITE NATURE BOOKS AS FEATURED ON BBC's WINTERWATCH 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2016 
 
'Bold and beautiful.' Robert Macfarlane 
 
'Sensitive, thoughtful and poetic ... leading us into a whole new way of looking at the world' Michael Palin 
 
'Touched by genius' John Lewis-Stempel 
 
'Absolutely mesmerizing, utterly beautiful and engrossing' Joanne Harris 
 
After moving from London to a new home in Yorkshire, and about to become a father for the first time, Rob Cowen finds himself in unfamiliar territory. Disoriented, hemmed in by winter and yearning for open space, he ventures out to a nearby edge-land: a pylon-slung tangle of wood, hedge, field, meadow and river that lies unclaimed and overlooked on the outskirts of town. 
 
Digging deeper into this lost landscape, he begins to uncover its many layers and lives – beast, bird, insect, plant and people – in kaleidoscopic detail. As the seasons change and the birth of his child draws closer, his transformative journey into the blurry space where human and nature meet becomes increasingly profound. In bringing this edge-land to life, Cowen offers both a both a unique portrait of people and place through time and an unforgettable exploration of the common ground we share with the natural world, the past and each other.

Common Ground

One of Britain’s Favourite Nature Books as featured on BBC’s Winterwatch

Ann Wroe

'She's a genius, I believe, because she lights up every subject she touches.' Hilary Mantel 
 
A Spectator Book of the Year 
 
Goethe claimed to know what light was. Galileo and Einstein both confessed they didn't. On the essential nature of light, and how it operates, the scientific jury is still out. There is still time, therefore, to listen to painters and poets on the subject. They, after all, spend their lives pursuing light and trying to tie it down. 
 
Six Facets of Light is a series of meditations on this most elusive and alluring feature of human life. Set mostly on the Downs and coastline of East Sussex, the most luminous part of England, it interweaves a walker's experiences of light in Nature with the observations, jottings and thoughts of a dozen writers and painters - and some scientists - who have wrestled to define and understand light. From Hopkins to Turner, Coleridge to Whitman, Fra Angelico to Newton, Ravilious to Dante, the mystery of light is teased out and pondered on. Some of the results are surprising. 
 
By using mostly notebooks and sketchbooks, this book becomes a portrait of the transitoriness, randomness, swiftness, frustrations and quicksilver beauty that are the essence of light. It is a work to be enjoyed, pondered over, engaged with, provoked by; to be packed in the rucksack of every walker heading for the sea or the hills, or to be opened to bring that outside radiance within four dark town walls. 
 
Lifescapes by Ann Wroe is coming in August 2023.

Six Facets Of Light

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