Adam Farrer
Adam Farrer is an award-winning writer, a teacher of creative nonfiction and an editor. Cold Fish Soup, his first book, won the NorthBound Book Award in 2021, and his work has been published in anthologies, journals and newspapers. He edits the creative nonfiction journal The Real Story, as well as lecturing in creative nonfiction writing and teaching workshops. He has performed at literary festivals and spoken word events including the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Manchester Literature Festival and the Northern Lights Writers Conference.
Cold Fish Soup
by Adam Farrer
Before Adam Farrer’s family relocated to Withernsea in 1992, he’d never heard of the Holderness coast. The move represented one thing to Adam: a chance to leave the insecurities of early adolescence behind. And he could do that anywhere. What he didn’t know was how much he’d grow to love the quirks and people of this faded Yorkshire resort, in spite of its dilapidated attractions and retreating clifftops. While Adam documents the minutiae of small-town life, he lays bare experiences that are universal. His insights on family and friendship are revealed in stories of reinvention, rapacious seagulls, interdimensional werewolves, burlesque dancing pensioners, and his compulsion towards the sea. Cold Fish Soup is an affectionate look at a place and its inhabitants, and the ways in which they can shape and influence someone, especially of an impressionable age. Adam’s account explores what it means to love and be shaped by a place that is under threat, and the hope – and hilarity – that can be found in community.
Prizes and awards
WINNER: NorthBound Book Award 2021
SHORTLISTED: IPG Zebralution Audio Award
REVIEWS OF Cold Fish Soup
“A nuanced, well-structured and memorable memoir; it deservedly won the Northbound Book Award.” Times Literary Supplement
'Breathtakingly good.' Lauren Brown, author of Hands: An Anxious Mind Unpicked
'Funny and moving.' Tony Walsh
'What a glorious book! Just beautiful. Adam dances down that line between happy and sad with such sure-footed grace. It underlines that there is no such thing as 'an ordinary life' or indeed an 'ordinary place'.' Catherine Simpson
'In a book as laced with humanity as it is with the presence of the North Sea, Adam Farrer asks that you fall in love with the overlooked, with that which is crumbling and destined to be lost to the sea. I fell for it hard.' Wyl Menmuir
'Witty and introspective … moving … elegiac … vivid evocations of the landscape … Echoing the canny writing of David Sedaris, Farrer has a knack for wringing hilarity from life’s grim moments … this meditation on the beauty of impermanence charms.' Publishers Weekly
'Vividly documents the minutiae of small-town life on the margins … captures it beautifully.' The Bookseller
'A truly wonderful and ingenious writer … funny, warm.' Emma Jane Unsworth
'Cold Fish Soup is such a wide-ranging and thought-provoking essay collection, covering masculinity, mental health, werewolves and alien sightings, sense of belonging, the difficulties of carving out a creative life in a geographically marginalised place, coastal erosion and burlesque, amongst other things. It drew me in, and kept me hooked, through all diversions and detours in time and narrative, and made me both cry and laugh heartily and fully. It is a love letter to Withernsea and all the people in it, its crumbling cliffs, its strange beauties and its losses, that made me love Withernsea too.' Polly Atkin
'Cold Fish Soup understands the oddity, tenderness and brutal ordinariness of small town life. Adam Farrer is a bold new voice in nonfiction writing. His keen observations are as gentle as they are wry, as attentive to the bleak truths of loss and deprivation as they are to the eccentric humour of humans being entirely themselves ... Witty, charming, moving and real.' Jenn Ashworth
Stan L Abbott
Stan L Abbott is an award-winning writer on the outdoors and conservation, whose career as a journalist began in Yorkshire. He has written on travel and the outdoors for national and regional newspapers and magazines. He has also worked in industry and tourism in the UK and Europe. He has written and edited many books about local history, travel and walking, and published or edited several travel and conservation magazines. A prominent member of the Outdoor Writers & Photographers Guild, he led a rail restoration group in Yorkshire and writes regularly for the New European newspaper. Walking the Line was longlisted for the Lakeland Book of the Year prize. His most recent book, Ring of Stone Circles, was published in April 2022.
To paraphrase L.P. Hartley, “The past is a different country.” Stan L Abbott sets out to explore the visible clues to our mysterious past from the Neolithic and Bronze Ages: stone circles. Cumbria boasts more of these monuments than any other English county. Here, our tallest mountains are ringed by almost fifty circles and henges, most of them sited in the foothills or on outlying plateaux. Were these the earliest such monuments in Britain, placing Cumbria at the heart of Neolithic society? And what traces of that society remain today in the roads we travel, the food we eat, the words we speak, our work and play? By observing and comparing many sites in Cumbria and beyond, and researching many sources, a greater understanding emerges. Were some circles built for ritualistic purposes, or perhaps astronomical? Were they burial sites? Or were they just places for people to meet? Illustrated with linocut illustrations by artist Denise Burden, Ring of Stone Circles follows the search for the hidden stories these monuments guard – and might reveal if we get to know them.
Prizes and awards
LONGLISTED: LAKELAND BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023
REVIEWS OF Ring of Stone Circles
'An energetic and informed historical adventure shining a light on Neolithic Cumbria.' Emily Atherton, Editor, Cumberland and Westmorland Herald
'An intriguing and often amusing journey through what little we know – and the great deal that we don’t – about our Neolithic and Bronze Age ancestry.' Steve Anglesey, Editor, The New European
Alison Armstrong
Alison Armstrong is a writer of prose and plays. She grew up in Leeds and East Yorkshire and has worked as a cleaner, waitress, painter and teacher, as well as developing her writing career. She won a Northern Writers’ Award for short fiction in 2017, a Literature Matters Award from the Royal Society of Literature in 2020 and a Project Grant from Arts Council England in 2021. Her poems, essays and short stories have been published in magazines and journals. She now makes her home in Lancashire, and Fossils is her first book.
When twelve-year-old Sherrie-Lee witnesses a failed bank robbery in her neglected town, she seizes an opportunity to claim a new identity for herself. Escaping her troubled home life, she tries out a new name and invents stories and personas to cover her tracks. Sherrie-Lee finds both possibility and loneliness in this new freedom, as well as an unusual friendship which she nurtures. But harsh realities close in, and she’s plagued with foreboding – from her vulnerable brother at home to the climate crisis. While she dreams of a kinder world, it won’t be long before her own deceits start catching up with her. This arresting debut challenges assumptions and captures the powerless yearning of adolescence with a voice that is fresh, magnetic and often funny – one that pulls you in and won’t let go.
REVIEWS OF Fossils
“A moving novel about resilience and compassion in the face of a hopeless future. You will fall in love with Armstrong's protagonist, and your heart will ache for a better future for her.” Kate Baguley
“A moving and vivid piece of storytelling … haunting, lyrical writing that is at all times compelling and frequently surprising.” Will Mackie, New Writing North
“Compelling. The prose bubbles and snaps with an energy that’s as changeable as its teen protagonist … a stunning, important novel about poverty and hopelessness, compassion and resilience.” Emily Devane
Graeme Macrae Burnet
Graeme Macrae Burnet was born in Kilmarnock and now lives in Glasgow. He is the author of five novels and a novella. His novels are His Bloody Project, Case Study and the French-set Gorski trilogy, the final part of which A Case of Matricide was published in October 2024. His novella Benbecula was published in October 2025 in Polygon’s Darklands series. The Guardian called it ‘intense and utterly compelling.’
His Bloody Project was shortlisted for the 2016 Booker Prize, the LA Times Mystery Book of the Year and the European Crime Fiction prize and won the Saltire Prize for Fiction. It was variously described as ‘astonishing’, ‘fiendishly readable’ and ‘spellbinding’. Case Study was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and included in the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2022. Hannah Kent called it ‘a novel of mind-bending brilliance.’ The Financial Times declared A Case of Matricide ‘a triumph’. It won the Australian Crime Writers Best International Crime award.
Graeme’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages, and he has appeared at festivals all over the world.
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2022
“A page-turning blast, funny, sinister and perfectly plotted … Rarely has being constantly wrong-footed been so much fun.” James Walton, The Times
“Very funny … engrossing.” Guardian
“Brilliant, bamboozling … burstingly alive and engaging.” Telegraph
“Compelling … I was hooked like a fish.” Spectator
‘I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger.’
London, 1965. An unworldly young woman believes that a charismatic psychotherapist, Collins Braithwaite, has driven her sister to take her own life. Intent on confirming her suspicions, she assumes a false identity and presents herself to him as a client, recording her experiences in a series of notebooks. But she soon finds herself drawn into a world in which she can no longer be certain of anything. Even her own character.
In Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet presents these notebooks interspersed with his own biographical research into Collins Braithwaite. The result is a dazzling – and often wickedly humorous – meditation on the nature of sanity, identity and truth itself, by one of the most inventive novelists writing today.
From the author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted His Bloody Project. www.casestudyGMB.com
Prizes and awards
SHORTLISTED: GORDON BURN PRIZE 2022
LONGLISTED: THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022
SHORTLISTED: NED KELLY AWARD 2022
LONGLISTED: HWA GOLD CROWN 2022
REVIEWS OF Case Study
“Such is Burnet’s skill that he immediately convinces the reader that everything he is about to say is based on historical fact … brilliantly depicted … intriguing … compulsive reading.” John Boyne, Irish Times
"Consistently inventive, caustically funny and surprisingly moving, this is one of the finest novels of the year.” Christian House, Financial Times
“You’ll be completely beguiled by this sly, darkly comic offering, with its unreliable narrator and its equally unreliable author.” Neil Armstrong, Mail on Sunday
“Sinister, darkly compelling and well-plotted, with an elegant twist. Truly compelling.” Jane Shilling, Daily Mail
“Brilliant, bamboozling … Burnet captures his characters’ voices so brilliantly that what might have been just an intellectual game feels burstingly alive and engaging.” Jake Kerridge, Telegraph
“What’s real and what’s not is beside the point in this skilful portrait of a disturbed woman and her encounters with an experimental 1960s psychotherapist … Both strands quickly become compelling … I was hooked like a fish.” Leyla Sanai
“Ingenious … a mystery wrapped in a riddle with as many questions as answers.” Stephen McGinty, Sunday Times
“Forensic, elusive and mordantly funny … layered with questions about authenticity and the self.” Booker Prize judges
“Burnet’s triumph is that it’s a page-turning blast, funny, sinister and perfectly plotted so as to reveal — or withhold — its secrets in a consistently satisfying way … Rarely has being constantly wrong-footed been so much fun.” James Walton, The Times
"Enormous fun … a mystery and a psychological drama wrapped up in one. Case Study is a triumph." Alex Preston, Observer
"Caustically funny and surprisingly moving, this is one of the finest novels of the year." Christian House, Financial Times
"A riveting psychological plot ... tortuous, cunning ... clever." Kate Webb, The Times Literary Supplement
'Encourages us to look more closely at the inherent instability of fiction itself … genuinely affecting … a very funny book.' Nina Allan, Guardian
Olga Wojtas
Olga Wojtas is an unconventional – and witty – writer of cosy crime fiction whose surrealist humour has been compared to the likes of P.G. Wodehouse, Jasper Fforde, Blackadder and the Marx Brothers. She was born and brought up in Edinburgh, where she attended James Gillespie’s High School – the model for the Marcia Blaine School for Girls (in Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie). Olga won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2014, and has amassed an impressive following for the Miss Blaine’s Prefect series, as well as several award nominations. A journalist for more than 30 years, Olga was Scottish editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement before she began adding creative writing to her portfolio.
Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Weird Sisters
by Olga Wojtas
Fifty-something librarian Shona is a proud former pupil of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, but has a deep loathing for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which she thinks gives her alma mater a bad name. Impeccably educated and an accomplished martial artist, linguist and musician, Shona is selected by Marcia Blaine herself to travel back in time for a crucial mission involving Macbeth, the Weird Sisters and a black cat. Unsure which version of history she’s in, Shona tries to figure out who she’s here to save. But between playing the Fool and being turned into a mouse, things don’t always go her way. Shona’s expertise in martial arts is put to the test as family tensions rise and fingers are pointed for murder. Can Shona unravel the mystery in time to complete her mission? Never underestimate a librarian!
Praise for Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Vampire Menace
Longlist: Comedy Women in Print 2020
“I couldn’t wait to be reunited with this character. I utterly love her.” Lynne Truss
“Audacious … witty and fun.” Herald
“Smart, funny and all-round good company, wherever Shona goes, readers will eagerly follow.” Scotsman
Cover for first edition. Still distributing whilst stocks last.
REVIEWS OF Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Weird Sisters
“Olga Wojtas is hilarious… I was hooked from page one … The humour and silliness in this novel are reminiscent of Terry Pratchett.” Jesse Lynn Smart
"Reminiscent of the late great Terry Pratchett … a riotous plot … a breathlessly funny page-turner … a great read, forsooth!" University of Edinburgh Journa
“Olga Wojtas’s 'Miss Blaine’s Prefect’ novels [are] among the most unashamedly enjoyable and entertaining of recent times. Imagine Doctor Who crossed with Sherlock Holmes….” Alistair Braidwood, Scots Whay Hae
“Witty and surrealistically humorous … Extremely light-hearted, funny and easy to read.” Dundee Courier, Book of the Week
J.A. Mensah
J.A. Mensah is a writer of prose and theatre and a Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of York. Castles from Cobwebs, her first novel, won the inaugural NorthBound Book Award (for a full length work of literary fiction or non-fiction by writers based in the North of England) in 2019. It was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2021 and nominated for the 35th annual Chambéry Festival du Premier Roman (2022).
Her plays have focused on human rights narratives and the testimonies of survivors. Her work has appeared in several collections, including Test Signal, an anthology of the best contemporary northern writing, published by Bloomsbury in 2021.
Read J.A. Mensah’s interview with New Writing North here.
Read an extract
LONGLISTED: Desmond Elliot Prize 2021 WINNER: NorthBound Book Award 2019 I’d always known that I was Brown. Black was different though; it came announced. Black came with expectations, of rhythm and other things that might trip me up. Imani is a foundling. Rescued as a baby and raised by nuns on a remote Northumbrian island, she grows up with an ever-increasing feeling of displacement. Full of questions, Imani turns to her shadow, Amarie, and her friend, Harold. When Harold can’t find the answers, she puts it down to what the nuns call her “greater purpose”. At nineteen, Imani answers a phone call that will change her life: she is being called to Accra after the sudden death of her biological mother. Past, present, faith and reality are spun together in this enthralling debut. Following her transition from innocence to understanding, Imani’s experience illuminates the stories we all tell to make ourselves whole.
Prizes and awards
DESMOND ELLIOT PRIZE: Longlisted
NORTHBOUND BOOK AWARD: Winner
CHAMBÉRY FIRST NOVEL AWARD: Longlisted
REVIEWS OF Castles from Cobwebs
“Mensah’s prose is gorgeous and lyrical, conjuring crystalline images … Strong women abound … Mensah’s storytelling skills make for an atmospheric, poignant, and bold novel that explores uncharted territory.” FOREWORD REVIEWS
'A strong debut.' THE FEMINIST NOOK
'Offers a unique blend of magical realism and social commentary – the past and the present intermingle with colonial history, displacement and family ties to form a rich narrative tapestry.' RESHMA RUI, WORDS OF COLOUR
'Striking … a memorable read that shines a light on important social issues whilst telling a beautiful story of hope, friendship and self-discovery.' BETH BARKER, NRTH LASS
'Mensah doesn’t shy away from tough subjects … a well-crafted debut … an extraordinary literary talent and … a thoroughly recommended read.' EMMA YATES-BRADLEY, NORTHERN SOUL
'Lyrical and magical … a powerful and very readable novel.' LOUISE MASKILL, INDIE BOOK NETWORK
'[An] extraordinary debut … changes with every reading, like the sea, deep and light, or the flicker of spidersilk … a book to be cherished and shared.' VAHNI CAPILDEO
'A compelling exploration of memory, race, mothers and the fractured self.' JESSICA ANDREWS
'From start to finish, I was spellbound … I absolutely love this book.' YVONNE BATTLE-FELTON
‘Real, powerful, and unique.’ CHITRA RAMASWAMY NorthBound Book Award Judge
Sue Lawrence
Sue Lawrence is the author of several historical thrillers that cast fascinating light on the perils and injustice that characterised women’s lives in Scotland through centuries past – whether born into penniless or powerful families: Lady’s Rock, The Green Lady, The Unreliable Death of Lady Grange, Down to the Sea, The Night He Left and Fields of Blue Flax. She is also one of the UK’s leading cookery writers and broadcasters. Having trained as a journalist, she won BBC’s MasterChef in 1991 and became a food writer, Cookery Editor of the Sunday Times and a regular contributor to Scotland on Sunday and many leading magazines, and she appears frequently on BBC Radio 4’s Kitchen Cabinet. Born in Dundee, she was raised in Edinburgh, where she now lives. She has won two Guild of Food Writers Awards and a Glenfiddich Food and Drink Award and is the author of more than 20 books.
The Green Lady
by Sue Lawrence
Read an extract
REVIEWS OF The Green Lady
“A delight to read… Excellent!” – Undiscovered Scotland
“A gripping tale of power, ghosts, cursed jewellery, intrigue and betrayal … imaginatively recounted, full of historical detail and a thoroughly satisfying read.” Joanne Baird, Portobello Book Blog
“A very good read.” Stories of Scotland podcast
“All the ingredients of a thrilling read – royal jewels, a secret compartment, family intrigue, ghostly superstition and a treacherous husband …” Sara Sheridan
“A rich atmospheric novel, giving voice to the women of Scotland's past.” Ailish Sinclair
“Illuminating … Filling in the blanks of the historical record … compelling.” Foreword Reviews
“Sue Lawrence brilliantly evokes the lives of the women around Mary Queen of Scots in this fascinating mystery of a missing jewel and a ghost that haunts a beautiful Scottish castle to this day. Beautifully written. I loved it.” Elisabeth Gifford
“A whirlwind of historic drama and traumatic events … Lawrence shows us the tragic and disempowered lives of Alexander’s wives … The story of these women is striking and the book is beautifully written. Lawrence’s historical fiction unapologetically portrays these real historical figures in a new light – offering insight into lives we may have never otherwise felt we got to know.” Dundee Courier, Book of the Week
Catherine Simpson
Catherine Simpson is a novelist and memoir writer based in Edinburgh. Her memoir One Body was published by Saraband in 2022 and was selected for World Book Night in 2023 and shortlisted in the Scottish Book Awards. This followed her 2019 memoir When I Had a Little Sister which was published to great critical acclaim: ‘superb’ (Sunday Times) ‘riveting’ (Observer). Her debut novel Truestory was published in 2015 and won her a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Her work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland.
Read an extract
World Book Night Audiobook Selection 2023
“A deep and soulful meditation on what it means to be a woman … powerful.” Sunday Times
“An often shocking reminder of the insidious sexism at large … lucid and warm.” Times Literary Supplement
‘It packs the wallop of a wrecking ball but reads as easily as a page-turner.’ The List
By the time she reached her fifties, Catherine Simpson and her body had gone through a lot together – from period pain, an abortion and early menopause to shaming and harassment. But there had been success, joy, love and laughter too: far more freedoms than her mother had, a fulfilling family life and career, and the promise of more gains for her daughters. So when a cancer diagnosis upends her life, Catherine is forced to reflect on her body, then and now. From having been brought up on a farm where vets were more common than doctors, and where illness was ‘a nuisance’, she finds herself faced with the nuisance of a lifetime.
One Body is the candid, searing and often darkly funny story of how Catherine navigates her treatment and takes stock of the emotions and reflections it provokes, until her cancer is in remission. And how she comes to appreciate the skin she is in – to be grateful for her body and all that it does and is.
From the author of When I Had a Little Sister:
‘A poignant memoir…seeks to find a way to address the unspoken. Simpson is a precise and skilled writer. This memoir…is a considerable achievement.’ Cathy Rentzenbrink, The Times
‘Riveting and bleakly funny…heartrending… compassionate and beadily observed.’ Observer
‘A superb memoir.’ Sunday Times
‘I found this book gripping and heart-wrenching. It sticks with me still.’ Mail on Sunday
Prizes and awards
SHORTLISTED Non-Fiction Book of the Year at Scotland's Book of the Year from the Saltire Society
REVIEWS OF One Body
“A memoir that is not only a journey through the bleak, blasted wasteland of cancer but a deep and soulful meditation on what it means to be a woman.” Sunday Times
"I love Catherine Simpson’s work … One Body is … the story of what it is like to exist in a woman’s body. It’s fresh, insightful and moving, and it’s a book that every man should read." Graeme Macrae Burnet
“Funny, bold, wry and, at times, enraging in the best possible way, this exploration … has an incredible energising quality … imbued with spirit and a real passion for life.” Mary Paulson-Ellis
”By turns poignant and searingly honest, this book is a wise and witty reflection on all that it means to have a body.” Claire Askew
“A vivid framing of the mystery, confusion and even terror tangled up with our young bodies in the ’70s.” Mary Anne Hobbs
“A joyful, angry, beautiful air-punch of a book, and so truthful – I felt as though each word was written on my own body.” Kirstin Innes
“Simpson movingly recounts her experience with breast cancer in this exquisite memoir … by turns witty and frank … It’s this candor that makes Simpson’s narrative shine.” (Sept.) Publishers Weekly
“A cracking read.” Janice Forsyth, BBC Scotland
‘It packs the wallop of a wrecking ball but reads as easily as a page-turner.’ Lucy Ribchester, The List
“Brave and bold … written with unflinching honesty.” Lancashire Evening Post
“Simpson reveals – in an often hilarious book – how she confronted her devastating diagnosis, and how it made her love her body again.” Mail on Sunday
“She explores the idea that functionality is connected to an individual’s worth with grace and dark humour.” Irish Times
“As social history, One Body is an often shocking reminder of the insidious sexism at large in the culture … Simpson is a lucid and warm survivor.” Times Literary Supplement
“A deep and soulful meditation on what it means to be a woman … powerful insight into … living through the unenlightened attitudes of the Seventies and Eighties.” Sunday Times
Polly Atkin
Polly Atkin is a poet and nonfiction writer, whose work focuses on nature, place and disability. Her poetry collections are Basic Nest Architecture (Seren: 2017), Much With Body (Seren: 2021), and Emergency Dream (Seren: 2026). Her nonfiction includes Recovering Dorothy: The Hidden Life of Dorothy Wordsworth (Saraband: 2021), Some Of Us Just Fall: On Nature and Not Getting Better (Sceptre: 2023 and Unnamed: 2024), and The Company of Owls (Elliott and Thompson: 2024 and Milkweed: 2026). She works as a freelancer from her home in Grasmere, where she co-owns Sam Read Bookseller.
Read an extract
Now also available on Perlego
Dorothy Wordsworth is well known as the author of the Alfoxden and Grasmere Journals (1798–1803) and as the sister of the poet William Wordsworth. She is widely praised for her nature writing and is often remembered as a woman of great physical vitality. Less well known, however, is that Dorothy became seriously ill in 1829 and was mostly housebound for the last twenty years of her life. Her personal letters and unpublished journals from this time paint a portrait of a compassionate and creative woman who made her sickroom into a garden for herself and her pet robin and who finally grew to call herself a poet. They also reveal how vital Dorothy was to her brother’s success, and the closeness they shared as siblings. By re-examining her life through the perspective of her illness, this biography allows Dorothy Wordsworth to step out from her brother’s shadow and back into her own life story.
Prizes and awards
LONGLISTED Barbellion Prize 2022
REVIEWS OF Recovering Dorothy
“The Wordsworths provide … a treasure trove for authors, but this unusual book about Dorothy Wordsworth … is all about her illness. I’ve never seen that subject covered before.” Hunter Davies, Cumbria Life
“Dorothy Wordsworth’s life is not worth less when, as Atkin reveals through scholarship and poetry, her ‘keen eye’ is ‘turned not just on the world around her, but on the world inside.’” Iona Glen
“Polly Atkin argues for Dorothy’s place in the writing of illness … A narrowing world, she reminds us, need not lead to a narrowing of the self.” Guardian
“A timely reappraisal …told with great sensitivity and … a grounded perspective of Dorothy’s everyday life in the Lakeland landscape.” Cumbria Life, Book of the Month
“A fresh, often deeply affecting reappraisal … breaks new ground … The restraint and spareness of Atkin’s writing is extremely powerful … almost leap[ing] off the page.” European Romantic Review
Roy Dennis
Roy Dennis MBE is one of the UK’s most prominent field naturalists. His approach to wildlife and conservation stems from years of experience working in the field, from climbing trees to ring osprey chicks to handling lynx kittens in Norway – and wanting to smuggle them back to Scotland. He has unparalleled expertise as a field naturalist, having worked in conservation, rare species tracking and reintroductions and directed projects for the RSPB and other organisations. He has made documentaries and been a presenter on Autumnwatch and Springwatch. His Wildlife Foundation of 25 years’ standing is internationally recognised for its work in conservation and wildlife protection.
He is the author of Cottongrass Summer (2020) and Mistletoe Winter (2021).
Mistletoe Winter
by Roy Dennis
Read an extract
Now also available on Perlego.
A new collection of vibrant essays to inform, stimulate and inspire every nature lover.
Times of darkness offer opportunities to reflect. In Mistletoe Winter, Roy Dennis offers his reflections on the natural world from the past year – from the welcome signs of change to the ongoing problems we are posing for nature, and what humankind can and must do about them.
As in his companion volume, Cottongrass Summer, Roy Dennis balances his alarm at the crisis confronting the natural world with his own sense of optimism that new generations can make crucial changes for the future. One of our most prominent advocates for our planet and its species, he writes with insight and originality. This volume will provide inspiration and ideas for everyone who cares about our planet and its species.
REVIEWS OF Mistletoe Winter
“A passionate writer with … persuasive arguments for always seeking to improve the way that we care for the natural world … It is not so much a timely book, but more of an urgent reminder to do something to change. Great stuff.” Paul Cheney
"Practical, plain-speaking, and marked by bold proposals … a passionate call to arms to appreciate and fight for the species we have left." Foreword Reviews
“Wonderful.” Mark Avery
“A fascinating read.” Bird Watching
