Ground Work: Writings on People and Places

Ground Work: Writings on People and Places

by Richard Holmes (Contributor), Tim Dee (Author)

Synopsis

We are living in the anthropocene - an epoch where everything is being determined by the activities of just one soft-skinned, warm-blooded, short-lived, pedestrian species. How best to make our way through the ruins that we have made? This anthology of commissioned work tries to answer this as it explores new and enduring cultural landscapes, in a celebration of local distinctiveness that includes new work from some of our finest writers. We have memories of childhood homes from Adam Thorpe, Marina Warner and Sean O'Brien; we journey with John Burnside to the Arizona desert, with Hugh Brody to the Canadian Arctic; going from Tessa Hadley's hymn to her London garden to caving in the Mendips with Sean Borodale to shell-collecting on a Suffolk beach with Julia Blackburn. Helen Macdonald, in her remarkable piece on growing up in a 50-acre walled estate, reflects on our failed stewardship of the planet: `I take stock.' she says, `During this sixth extinction, we who may not have time to do anything else must write now what we can, to take stock.' This is an important, necessary book.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Published: 01 Mar 2018

ISBN 10: 1910702714
ISBN 13: 9781910702710
Book Overview: A timely collection of the best British nature writing newly commissioned by one of the great authorities on the subject.

Media Reviews
Tim Dee has brought together a wondrous array of talent for this life-affirming, often magical, anthology of nature writing. -- Katharine Norbury * Observer *
This superb anthology is a paean to spirit of place in dislocated times... And it is a trove. -- Barbara Kiser * Nature *
The anthology for me became a kind of pilgrimage: Canterbury Tales with Tim Dee leading his merry band to the new Common Ground site in Dorset... This collection about how to live lightly in the world and care deeply for its future... is overwhelmingly a message of hope. -- Sue Brooks * Caught by the River **Book of the Month** *
In Ground Work, Tim Dee has collated... An amazing vein of prose from some of the best nature and landscape writers around... A truly excellent book. -- Paul Cheney * Nudge *
Dee, who has the eyes of a birdwatcher, the ears of a radio producer and the soul of a poet, has gathered... this wonderful anthology. -- Michael Kerr * Daily Telegraph *
Author Bio
Tim Dee is a BBC radio producer making upwards of thirty programmes a year. His first book, The Running Sky, was published by Cape in 2009 and described his first five birdwatching decades. His latest book, Four Fields, described more deeply his ideas of the pastoral. He collaborated with the poet Simon Armitage on the anthology The Poetry of Birds.