Irreplaceable: The fight to save our wild places

"The concept of this book is, I suppose, relatively simple, in that he goes to places that we may or may not be about to lose, and talks about the whys and wherefores. Which makes it sound quite boring, doesn’t it? Which it really and absolutely isn’t! “You could sit quite happily on a beach and read some of these, because they’re really well-written, clever, and in some cases lyrical books” I thought this was a wonderful book. It’s beautifully written. And it’s quite sobering as well, in that he goes to beautiful and exotic-sounding places around the world – but also places that are sort of… just slightly above bog-standard countryside, if you see what I mean, and explains, through the people who live and work in them, why these places matter so much. There’s a really strong sense in this book of the importance of place to humans, which perhaps we don’t talk about enough. It’s sobering. But I think it’s a hopeful book – defiant, and full of life and love. It’s a lovely book. Well, you could ask ten people that very same question and get ten different opinions. I think what Julian Hoffman would say – having never met the man – is that there are some places that we really need to fight to save. And there are other places, although he doesn’t talk about them, you could stand to lose. I think, you know, all of the books have a strong message about being quite realistic about where we are and what we have to do – inconvenient, expensive and hard work as it might be. Rather than just thinking, ‘we’ll shove it over there, because there’s nothing else there.’ Because, actually, there’s an awful lot of stuff there."