‘A surprising page-turner, full of humour and startling details’ THE TIMES
‘If I read a better history this year, I will be lucky’ TOM HOLLAND
‘An astonishing tour de force’ SPECTATOR
Longlisted for the 2024 Highland Book Prize
This beautifully illustrated overview of the wildlife of the British Isles showcases the diversity of our plant and animal life.
‘On Skellig Michael, thousands of birds appear and disappear, erecting towers, coming together in wings of movement which build and unravel over the empty sea. Often, no one else is there to stand beside me on the island. The mind wanders; links with the past are easily made; ancient ways of viewing things come alive.’
‘Wonderfully researched and beautifully written’ Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan
‘Succeeds in conjuring a lost world’ Dava Sobel, author of Longitude
A startling book, his most personal to date, from Philip Hoare, co-curator of the Moby-Dick Big Read and winner of the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize for ‘Leviathan’.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be given your own remote islands? Thirty years ago it happened to Adam Nicolson.
