In Linescapes, Hugh Warwick has written a gloriously unclassifiable book, a manifesto-adventure-exploration-reflection that manages to be political, passionate, perceptive – and very funny

A requiem, a call to arms and a delighted amble along a hedge: a kind, wise, angry, jolly and mournful book, as rumbustiously readable as it is urgently important

Part discovery, part wonderment, both a travel narrative and a scientific exploration, Linescapes could change the way we perceive our land and its inhabitants forever

A fascinating work of landscape detection based on entirely straight journeys

Eye-opening and inspiring. Linescapes has utterly transformed my vision of the British countryside. Hugh Warwick offers a compelling primer for rethinking and rewilding our fragmented natural world.

Accessible and entertaining... Linescapes has given me hope for the future.

I will never again look at a hedgerow or dyke in the same way. This is a beautifully crafted book which elegantly explains why and how our UK landscape has comes to look like a patchwork quilt – with each section of the quilt joined together by human-created needlework in the form of hedgerows, ditches, dykes, paths, green lanes, canals, roads... This book is both timely and essential reading. I can’t recommend it highly enough

Hugh Warwick’s tremendous book is a lurid, mournful and sometimes enragingly upbeat account… Warwick is a warm, chatty writer – first-class company in a ditch or swamp… He’s one of the warriors of Twyford Down; a naturalist of great stature, with palpable empathy for the natural world… To march with him along these linescapes is to learn, to laugh and, ultimately, to weep… He has composed a profound, lyrical love song – and hence a powerful call to arms

In Linescapes, Hugh Warwick provides a good-humoured, even visionary, perspective on the fragile ecology of our hedges, roads, power lines and railways… The author is at his lyrical best when discussing “ancient paths and green lanes” … He focuses his inquisitive eye on beauty and complexity… and praises the luxuriant foxgloves… Warwick is a generous companion and never a prickly know-it-all, even as he presents his manifesto for reconnection

Linescapes is a timely book. Warwick pulls together a lot of disparate elements of the landscape and tries to make us think about them in a cohesive way

Warwick has hit on a fresh approach by pointing out that nature doesn’t really do straight lines, yet straight lines are exactly what we have introduced… Warwick has probed some interesting perspectives, serious food for thought whatever your stance on conservation

I will never again look at a hedgerow or dyke in the same way. This is a beautifully crafted book which elegantly explains why and how our UK landscape has comes to look like a patchwork quilt – with each section of the quilt joined together by human-created needlework in the form of hedgerows, ditches, dykes, paths, green lanes, canals, roads etc. The creation of these ‘lines’ and their unintentional consequences for biodiversity, is something that everyone should take note of – some good, some bad. In a time when attention is increasingly turning towards the question of how can we conserve UK biodiversity alongside other competing demands for land from urbanization and travel infrastructure to food production, this is book is both timely and essential reading. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Poetic, humorous, and down-to-earth... There are many lines of wisdom entering the book and leaving the book...the author's wide reading and learning is put at the service of this book to our benefit as readers

The most important and influential Canadian thinker since Marshall McLuhan. His bold synthesis of psychology, anthropology, science, politics and comparative religion is forming a genuinely humanistic university of the future

Someone with not only humanity and humour, but serious depth and substance ... Peterson has a truly cosmopolitan and omnivorous intellect... There is a burning sincerity to the man

A rock-star academic, a cool, cowboy-boot-wearing public thinker who directs tough love at overprotected youth ... Peterson twirls ideas around like a magician

Jordan Peterson is a Canadian psychologist whose seemingly overnight ascent to cultural rockstar comes after years of deep scholarship in many disciplines

12 Rules for Life hits home - from identifying the deeply engrained hierarchical ladder that motivates our decision making to asking indispensable and sometimes politically unpopular questions about your life and suggesting ways to better it

Peterson has become a kind of secular prophet who, in an era of lobotomised conformism, thinks out of the box ... His message is overwhelmingly vital

In a time of unrelenting connection, solitude becomes a radical act. It also becomes an essential one. Michael Harris makes a thoughtful and deeply felt case for why the art of spending quality time with oneself matters now more than ever – and the steps we can take to reclaim it.

She often finds herself dealing with the most macabre cases of murder. But the no-nonsense Scot is an upbeat character with a dry sense of humour, clearly identifiable in her memoir.

Ideal reading if you're a cheerful soul who likes to think about death. And think how it'll brighten your conversation on holiday.

Books of the Year

Best of the Year: Memoir
This book captures the profundity of human life while displaying a sense of humour, and peels back the skin to reveal a world few of us ever discover

Dame Sue Black, the woman who inspired the hit television show Silent Witness and has done for forensic science what Strictly has done for ballroom dancing, is an unlikely but deeply worthy national treasure.... Black's memoir, like her story, is curiously vibrant and life-affirming.

You can't help but warm to this retired professor of anatomy and forensic anthropology who chose "the many faces of death" as her medical speciality, yet is herself so vividly alive. Like [David] Nott, Black travelled the world at times, sifting maggots, bullets and human body parts in war zones. Despite it all, she remains convinced that our humanity transcends the very worst of which our species is capable.

All That Remains provides a fascinating look at death - its causes, our attitudes toward it, the forensic scientist's way of analyzing it. A unique and thoroughly engaging book.

This fascinating memoir, dealing with everything from bodies given to medical science to the trauma caused by sudden, violent ends, offers reassurance, and even hope, to the fearful and cynical.

A gripping natural-history detective story. Was Rist a cunning con-artist who more or less got away with the perfect, albeit clumsy crime? Or was he hopelessly addicted to feathers, to his hobby, and to his status as a young fly-tying protégé without the economic means to realise his dreams and potential?

This well written account of the known facts is well worth a read

It was hard to put the book down… Read it yourselves, enjoy it and learn from it!