A book of heart and hope and downright common sense about the future.

How To Catch A Mole is a beguiling mixture: part autobiography, part handbook, part travel book, part philosophical treatise. I’m happy to report that it succeeds on each level

Not only a compelling meditation on the 'little gentleman in black velvet'…but also a fascinating, lyrical account of the loneliness and beauty of life on the margins, a memoir of vagrancy

This is a wonderful book about our relationship with the earth, with other animals and with our own troubled humanity. It has taught me a lot. I feel great love for it.

How to Catch a Mole is a beautiful, elegiac ode to a remarkable creature. It’s also an exploration of Hamer’s life as he approaches his sunset years. Each page is filled with wonder, love, regret, humility and a sense of wonder (and oneness) with nature.

[How To Catch a Mole] has the feel of an enduring classic. It is the testament of a man who has learnt to see, who has the nerve to interrogate his own annihilation and who…handles language superbly

Marc tells his story and explores what moles, and a life in nature, can tell us about our own humanity and our search for contentment.

[Hamer] offers us some heart-rending images which linger in the mind long after you’ve closed the book

Marc Hamer's uplifting writings shed some light on the velvety creatures burrowing beneath our countryside.

Marc Hamer's wonderful How To Catch A Mole took me completely by surprise. It certainly is a book about
catching moles but it is also a book of sound philosophy, poignant biography and a zen-like meditation on life and nature. Brilliant.

The wisdom contained in this elegiac and intensely moving book doesn't need embellishing

It's not often you meet a mole-catcher, let alone read their story. Marc Hamer's uplifting writings shed some light on the velvety creatures burrowing beneath our countryside

[A] distinctive, quietly revelatory, book…a somewhat unlikely interplay of Hamer’s easeful poetry and observations with accounts of both the specialist life of moles and his own biography. Skilfully woven with eloquent simplicity, it offers a rich and sustained meditation on the task of apprehending the complex and delicate interconnectedness of life and land

A distinctive, quietly revelatory book... a rich and sustained meditation on the task of apprehending the complex and delicate interconnectedness of life and land. Its pages have much to teach us.

A beguiling mixture of autobiography, practical handbook and philosophical treatise

[A] wholly original book

A double portrait: of the difficult, lonely, and intense domesticity of both moles and Hamer

Palin’s experiences, including a voyage on a Russian ship to the channel where the wreck of Erebus was discovered, give a sense of immediacy and proportion to his narrative . . . Michael Palin has done full justice to [John Franklin] and all these remarkable men. This truly is a marvellous book.

This lively account reveals much about both exploration and the Royal Navy in the 19th century . . . Palin is a diligent researcher who has trawled the primary sources and, largely in the course of filming his television series Pole to Pole, has visited many of the key sites here.

Nicholas Crane, current president of the Royal Geographical Society, has described Palin, one of his predecessors, as “the world’s most appealing practitioner of geographical curiosity”, and it’s that curiosity which drives his stirring new book . . . His account is written in crisp, unshowy prose.

A great story . . . Told in a very relaxed and sometimes – as you might expect – very funny Palin style.

Palin has seized [the story] with relish: the distinctive dry humour familiar to his television audiences finds plenty of opportunities to emerge, and his easy assurance as a writer . . . keeps the pace sprightly.

Fascinating. Exciting. Authoritative.

A delightfully granular description of ship-board life, all told in a brisk, breezy style . . . A very readable and fascinating tale from the early years of polar exploration.

A great read . . . You feel you’re sitting in the pub with Michael Palin himself as he regales you with tales of the mighty seas.

The nicest Python with yet another deeply fascinating project

Everyone’s favourite Python tells the story of Erebus in his cheery prose style

Palin, a skilled writer, makes extensive use of diaries, letters and other sources to anchor his story in clear detail in this highly recommended read.

Palin’s personality – that of a rather beloved Uncle who knows something about everything – can’t help shining through, but he never lets it over-shadow the weaving of this, the very definition of a ripping yarn.

These gloomy winter days have put me in the perfect mood for grim tales of desperate men in the frozen north, a craving satisfied in spades by Michael Palin's excellent Erebus . . . The book is a serious bit of history by Palin, backed up by proper research and genuine insight . . . a lovely piece of publishing by Hutchinson.

One of my favourite reads/listens recently was Michael Palin's excellent Erebus. Highly recommended.

A true tale that brings the main characters and events to life with wit, empathy and clarity . . . A beautifully written and researched book from a natural storyteller. I expected something fantastic and I got it.

Probably the most enjoyable non-fiction book I have ever read.

Moby Dick for trees.

Alert to the large ideas and generous to the small ones; in an age of cramped autofictions and self-scrutinising miniatures, it blossoms.

Brilliant at the futility of human action.

A masterpiece of operatic proportions … What Powers means to explore is a sense of how we become who we are, individually and collectively, and our responsibility to the planet and to ourselves … A magnificent achievement: a novel that is, by turns, both optimistic and fatalistic, idealistic without being naïve.

His masterpiece.

You will careen through this book. The prose is driven. You don’t really get to draw breath … The writing is steel-edged, laser-sharp when Richard Powers wants it to be. When he sets out to nail meaning, it’s done. There are sentences you return to and wonder at.

This walk through the woods via words is a passionate paean to the natural world that prompts us to appreciate afresh our place on the planet.

[I]t’s huge, it’s exciting, it’s wondrous … This really deserves to be read.

The Overstory is a book you learn from.

Dazzlingly written… Among the best novels I’ve read this decade… Despite its deep-time perspective, it could hardly be more of-the-moment

A beautiful novel about humans reconnecting with nature in a fascinatingly, inventive world with colourful, rich characters, it will rekindle your love for nature

An intriguing, powerful book

Absolutely blown away by this epic, heartbreaking novel about us and trees

This extraordinary novel transformed my view of nature. Never again will I pass great tree without offering a quiet but heartfelt incantation of thanks, gratitude and wonder

A sweeping novel that skilfully intertwines many different stories of trees and people to create a paean to the hidden power and vital importance of the natural world

Absorbing, thought-provoking and more than enough incentive to embrace your inner tree-hugger

The Overstory is filled with character and incident enough to engage anybody, but it's also filled with philosophy, science, poetry, and colour. It's a celebration of the world and humanity, but also tells of our coming doom. Perhaps above all it's a eulogy to trees. Eulogy is the right word because the novel celebrates the life, the beauty and wisdom of trees-but also their death. The novel also casts a cold-but loving-eye on humanity

The Overstory has the mix of science and fiction that I so love; it widens my understanding and respect for the creatures who share this planet

Stunning... It's been one of those rare books that has had a profound effect on me, and which has changed my perspective on life

Mind-boggling and visionary. The multi-stranded novel is a masterpiece in which science and poetry are deeply intertwined

A compelling read is that is near impossible to put down

The Overstory is a prescient novel that urges us to take responsibility for our actions

A masterpiece of storytelling at its very best. Powers weaves together science, poetry, nature and humanity so beautifully that it makes my heart ache and my mind fly

A wild and expansive novel, knitting together a glorious and diverse cast of characters, some of them human, some of them trees. I defy you not to be moved, and then angered about what we are doing to our planet and these glorious sentinels rooted upon it

My novel of the year was Richard Powers' masterpiece, The Overstory... it's a magnificent read

The Overstory by Richard Powers is likely the most beautiful book ever written about people and trees