Category Archives: Nature Writing

Ethel by Helen Mort- the biography of countryside pioneer Ethel Haythornthwaite

Posted on May 16, 2024 by mandywight

If Ethel Haythornthwaite isn’t yet a household name, then she really should be. She was the woman who, in 1924, gathered together a group of Sheffielders that went on to co-found the CPRE—the Campaign to Protect Rural England. After the … Continue reading →

Posted in Books in English, Nature Writing, Uncategorized, Writers from Derbyshire and Sheffield | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Black Car Burning by Helen Mort

Posted on May 13, 2024 by mandywight

The title might make you think it’s a novel about an urban riot, but in fact Black Car Burning is the name of a challenging climb in the Peak District, just outside Sheffield. You wouldn’t be wrong in making that … Continue reading →

Posted in Books in English, Nature Writing, Uncategorized, Writers from Derbyshire and Sheffield | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Rombo by Esther Kinsky translated by Caroline Schmidt.

Posted on June 9, 2023 by mandywight

A recent trip to Italy set me thinking again about Esther Kinsky’s work, and particularly her novel Grove, a triptych of a book dealing with death and loss, set in Italy. I was aware her next novel, Rombo, was also … Continue reading →

Posted in Books in German, Books in Translation, Books set in Italy, Nature Writing | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

The Gamekeeper by Barry Hines

Posted on June 5, 2022 by mandywight

It seemed fitting to be reading The Gamekeeper in the days leading up to the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. It’s a story of privilege and inequality, focusing on the life of George Purse, gamekeeper for the Duke, the owner of vast … Continue reading →

Posted in Books in English, Nature Writing, Working Class Voices | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Ankomst by Gohril Gabrielsen, translated by Deborah Dawkin

Posted on August 7, 2020 by mandywight

This powerful short novel, set in a remote peninsula in the north of Norway, took me right out of my comfort zone. Not surprising, with its descriptions of bleak and desolate snowfields and drifts, their shapes shifting in the merciless, … Continue reading →

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On the Red Hill by Mike Parker

Posted on July 23, 2019 by mandywight

Mike Parker and his partner, Peredur, are overwhelmed when they discover that their elderly friends, George and Reg, have bequeathed their beautiful house in mid- Wales, Rhiw Goch, to them. They had in fact been caring for their friends during … Continue reading →

Posted in Books and Travel, Books in English, History, Memoir, Nature Writing, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Am Fluss- River- by Esther Kinsky

Posted on April 6, 2019 by mandywight

A woman of indeterminate age arrives in an area of East London, near to the River Lea. We know little about her, nor why she’s come there, but she spends her days walking with no particular plan along the river, … Continue reading →

Posted in Books and Travel, Books in German, Books in Translation, Memoir, Nature Writing, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Fish Ladder: A Journey Upstream by Katharine Norbury

Posted on April 4, 2018 by mandywight

This book had been plucking at my sleeve for a while, since reading Richard Kerridge’s review in the Guardian in February 15. But it was visiting Spurn Point in November last year, that atmospheric low lying finger of land curving … Continue reading →

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Hain- Grove- by Esther Kinsky

Posted on March 6, 2018 by mandywight

Esther Kinsky’s most recent book, Hain, is part memoir, part nature and travel writing, but it is also a meditation on death. The three sections of the book each describe journeys made in different parts of Italy when the writer … Continue reading →

Posted in Books in German, Books set in Italy, Nature Writing, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

The Outrun by Amy Liptrot

Posted on November 10, 2016 by mandywight

This beautiful book which has just won the Wainwright Prize 2016 for nature and travel writing will speak to anyone who has teetered on the edges of alcohol dependency or along the clifftops of the Orkney Islands. Amy Liptrot’s book … Continue reading →

Posted in Books in English, Memoir, Nature Writing, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment