Landmarks

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE


Praise from America and England for Landmarks

“Landmarks is wildly ambitious, part outdoor adventure story, part literary criticism, part philosophical disquisition, part linquistic excavation project, part mash note. . . It’s an argument for sitting down with a book; it’s also an argument for going outside and paying attention.”
– The New York Times

“[A] magnificent meditation on the words we have for describing the natural world. . . [Macfarlane] is the great nature writer, and nature poet, of this generation.”
– Tom Shippey, The Wall Street Journal

“Simply one of the best nature history books I have read in years, Landmarks is a stunning paean to the beauty of language, the craft of writing and the power of nature. It is truly a book that will force you to rethink your relationship to the world around you.”
– The Seattle Times

“[A] fascinating, poetic compilation of vocabulary invented to describe the natural world. . .Lucent, lyrical prose evokes Macfarlane’s aesthetic, ethical, and powerfully tactile response to nature’s enchantments.”
– Kirkus Reviews
 
“Macfarlane’s beautifully written blend of nature writing and lexicon connects the work of his favorite writers to the British Isles’ natural settings and the distinctive, lyrical vocabulary used to describe them. . .[An] exceptional compilation.”
– Publishers Weekly
 
“This joyous meditation on land and language is a love letter to the British Isles.” 
– Observer

“Lyrical, charged with a monumental strength. Surely no one since the young Ted Hughes has written about British landscape and wildlife with such fierce enthusiasm. Few writers today have such power to make you look afresh at the familiar . . . making a British countryside come alive as the most exotic place on earth.” 
– Daily Express

“Astonishing and revelatory. Please read Landmarks, encounter its wonderful words, let them open your mind . . . start looking at the world in the dazzlingly receptive way they have taught you.” 
– Adam Nicolson, Spectator

“As teeming and complex as an ecosystem, rawly moving, enormously pleasurable, historically important and imaginatively compelling, elegant and scholarly.”
– Melissa Harrison, Financial Times

“Passionate and magical…A deep scholarship of the countryside with an adventurous approach, all rendered in immaculate, delicious prose. Macfarlane offers an enriched nature. A kind of manual of how people in love with place and language are created by landscape.”
– Horatio Clare, Daily Telegraph

“So important, enriching. Ought to be read by policymakers, educators, armchair environmentalists and active conservationists the world over.”
– John Burnside, Guardian