Underland: A Deep Time Journey

"On the subject of the natural world, the patron saint of nature writing Robert Macfarlane had a new, hotly-anticipated book out: Underland: A Deep Time Journey . Having climbed the highest heights in his debut Mountains of the Mind , Macfarlane now dives down to the lowest of the lows. He goes caving in limestone caverns deep underground, rattles through salt mines under the sea in carts and stumbles across (literal) underground subcultures in the Paris catacombs, all interwoven with learned digressions into geological epochs and classical conceptions of the underworld. What can I say? Macfarlane is a most remarkable writer. And if you like the sound of Underland, I imagine you will also enjoy Kathleen Jamie’s Surfacing , which I have only just begun but am already crowing about to anyone who will listen. Jamie is a fantastic Scottish poet and essayist, and Surfacing is her third essay collection after the wonderful Findings and Sightlines , both of which are very highly regarded. Charles Foster also enthused about it in his selection of the best nature writing of 2019 . David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future is essentially a work of climate change eschatology, and doesn’t make for a relaxing read before bed (in fact, it made me so anxious I had to put it away for a few weeks and come back to it.) But it’s an essential text for anyone with an interest in the environment, or, well, anyone alive on the Earth today."