In The Old Ways, greatly celebrated naturalist Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove-roads and sea paths that form part of a vast network of routes criss-crossing the British landscape and its waters, and connecting them to the continents beyond. The result is an immersive, enthralling exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt old paths, of the stories our tracks keep and tell, of pilgrimage and ritual, and of songs and their singers.
Told in Macfarlane’s distinctive and celebrated voice and folding together natural history, cartography, geology, archaeology and literature, Macfarlane explores the chalk downs of England to the bird-islands of the Scottish northwest, and from the disputed territories of Palestine to the sacred landscapes of Spain and the Himalayas. This will be a highly memorable occasion with a tremendously engaging speaker.