Contemplative, impressionistic and suffused with aspects of the mythic, these pieces operate at times like prose poems, and they return to a key setting of The Old Ways: the secret spaces of southern England, the flashpoints and the hidden paths.

Our intense and often fraught relationship with the natural world is an abiding theme in Robert Macfarlane’s books. Perhaps the most gifted naturalist working today, he is an intrepid explorer and poetic observer of lofty heights and everything in between.

... an almost-too-fitting natural history for this year.

The authors’ voices meld wonderfully, and readers may come to feel that 'paths run through people as surely as they run through places'.

The writing is idiosyncratic and elegant, the story inviting enough that, for all its eldritch elements, one might wish to wake up covered in dew and join Macfarlane, Richards, and Donwood in a meal of damson gin and tea-bread—and maybe see a few ghosts along the way.

... uneven but ultimately pleasing.