Silt | Non-Fiction - www.zzdbook.com

Silt

Oct 10, 2024 11:21 AM

Author:Robert Macfarlane

Silt

In Silt, bestselling travel writer Robert Macfarlane walks the Broomway, the deadliest path in Britain.

In one of the most striking chapters of his brilliant 2012 book The Old Ways, Robert Macfarlane walks the Essex offshore path which has claimed the lives of more than sixty people over the centuries. His companion on this atmospheric and potentially perilous journey is his old friend and photographer, David Quentin.

In this special e-book edition, the Broomway section of The Old Ways appears alongside a run of twenty-two photographs taken that day by David, which form a haunting counterpoint to the text itself. In a newly written afterword, David reflects on the walk, on Robert Macfarlane's writing and on the fascinating legal terrain which paths like this one traverse even as they cross the land itself.

Praise for The Old Ways:

'Macfarlane has shown how utterly beautiful a brilliantly written travel book can still be. As perfect as his now classic The Wild Places. Maybe it is even better than that' William Dalrymple, Observer

'A lovely book, a poetic investigation into what it is to follow a path, on land and at sea, in the footsteps of both our ancient predecessors and such writers as Edward Thomas: Macfarlane is reviving an entire body of nature writing here' David Sexton, Evening Standard

'Beautifully written, moving, thrilling. It reminded me of how much stranger and richer the world is... at walking speed' Philip Pullman, Guardian

'A magnificent meditation on walking and writing. An astonishingly haunted book' Adam Nicolson, Daily Telegraph

'The Old Ways sets the imagination tingling . . . it is like reading a prose Odyssey sprinkled with imagist poems' John Carey, Sunday Times

Robert Macfarlane is the author of the award-winning Mountains of the Mind; The Wild Places; The Old Ways, which was shortlisted for the 2012 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction; and Landmarks, which was shortlisted for the 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

David Quentin is a barrister specialising in tax law. He also takes photographs, teaches Cambridge undergraduates about versification and plays the bass guitar in London-based krautgoth noisegaze outfit The Murder Act.

Reviews

Evgeny Morozov is the most challenging - and best-informed - critic of the Techno-Utopianism surrounding the Internet. If you've ever had the niggling feeling, as you spoon down your google, that there's no such thing as a free lunch, Morozov's book will tell you how you might end up paying for it

—— Brian Eno

A clear voice of reason and critical thinking in the middle of today's neomania

—— Nassim Taleb, author of 'The Black Swan'

This hard-hitting book argues people have become enslaved to the machines they use to communicate. It is incisive and beautifully written; whether you agree with Morozov or not, he will make you think hard

—— Richard Sennett, author of 'Together'

Praise for The Net Delusion: Gleefully iconoclastic ... not just unfailingly readable: it is also a provocative, enlightening and welcome riposte to the cyber-utopian worldview

—— Economist

A passionate and heavily researched account of the case against the cyber-utopians ...

—— Bryan Appleyard , New Statesman

Selected by the New York Times as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2011

—— New York Times

These stories are wonderful. They make us realize that within every human being lie the pain and the beauty that make life worthwhile

—— Bernie S. Siegel

Dr Yalom is unusually honest, both with his patients and about himself

—— Anthony Storr

Yalom is a gifted storyteller, and from the sound of these tales, a no-less-gifted psychotherapist

—— Los Angeles Times

This is an impressive transformation of clinical experience into literature. Dr Yalom's case histories are more gripping than 98 percent of the fiction published today, and he has gone to amazing lengths of honesty to depict himself as a realistic flesh-and-blood character: funny, flawed, perverse, and, above all, understanding

—— Phillip Lopate

I loved Love's Executioner. Dr Yalom has learned something that fiction writers learned years ago - that people's mistakes are a lot more interesting than their triumphs

—— Joanne Greenberg

An informative history of the English relationship with trees

—— Arminta Wallace , Irish Times

Elegant and heartfelt… Part eco-memoir, part monograph, wholly engrossing

—— Daily Telegraph

Fantastic

—— Neil Denny, Little Atoms

A truly compelling book, savage and sparkling by turns

—— Kathryn Hughes , Mail on Sunday

Alan Root’s overflowing life as a dedicated, adventurous film-maker and naturalist is almost the story of wild East Africa itself in those glorious and tragic years surrounding the advent of political independence…a fresh, honest, often moving (and humorous) account, a terrific contribution to the literature

—— Peter Matthiessen

Required reading for anyone who wants to experience the joys and sorrows of conservation in today's Africa

—— Wilbur Smith

Root’s enthralling memoir…is the best true-life adventure story to come out of Africa for years

—— Sunday Telegraph

His is a funny, harrowing, beautifully written love letter to Africa

—— Christopher Hart , Sunday Times

In this captivating memoir [Root] documents his brushes in the bush and his passion for wildlife

—— Big Issue in the North

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Root has written the most extraordinary love letter to Africa – packed with drama and knowledge, tragedy and hope... A completely gripping and important study of this complex and disappearing natural environment

—— Sally Morris , Daily Mail

His is an extraordinary story laced with tragedy

—— Mail on Sunday

[Root's] life story, vividly related here, is crammed with incident and adventure. Curious, creative and fearless, he has diced with death on numerous occasions and been mauled several times in his efforts to capture the daily lives of everything from silver-back gorillas to leopards in the wild on film. A gripping account of a life well lived

—— Good Book Guide

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