Underland: A Deep Time Journey

Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2020

Shortlisted for the Waterstones Book of the Year 2019

From the high peaks of Mountains of the Mind to the lost paths of The Old Ways and the vanishing lexicon of The Lost Words, Robert Macfarlane has traced the way our landscape is fused with language, storytelling and imagination.

Ten years in the making, Underland is his enthralling record of journeys deep into the worlds beneath our feet. From the burial grounds of the Mendip Hills to the hidden catacombs of Paris, and further, to the deep blue, ancient ice of Greenland, Macfarlane explores - through myth, memory and experience – our most feared and venerated spaces of loss, discovery and deep time.

Blending personal memoir, travelogue and nature writing, infused with a powerful ability to read the essential messages about our changing planet and our place within it embedded in the very ground we walk upon, Underland is an astonishing and unforgettable book. Written with lyricism, power and prescience, it brings together the ancient and the urgent in a revelatory examination of an unseen and essential netherworld.