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Books: Is A River Alive? Underland, The Lost Words, The Old Ways etc Music: Lost In The Cedar Wood, Spell Songs Films: Mountain, River Prof, Cambridge
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Recent posts
Hello—I’m giving this year’s Reith Lectures, the BBC’s flagship annual lecture series. The first series was given by Bertrand Russell in 1948-49, and in the decades since then they’ve been given by thinkers including Wole Soyinka, Edward Said, Stephen Hawking, Hilary Mantel & Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
I grew up listening to the Reiths. As a student I attended Marina Warner’s ‘Managing Monsters’ lectures in 1994; I gave my grandfather, not long before he died, the book of Onora O’Neill’s 2004 lectures on ‘Trust’. The Reiths now represent a near-unique opportunity to do serious, large-scale thinking about complex, urgent issues to a big general audience.
My title is “The Human Superiority Complex”: across four lectures I’ll argue that the mistaken belief humans are both above & apart from the larger living world has helped bring the Earth to its fracturing present & perilous future.
1. ‘Earth: the Ladder & the Web’ traces the rise & consolidation of the story of human supremacy: the idea we’re perched atop a ladder of life, rather than entangled in a web.
2. ‘Air: the Great Thinning’ examines the consequences of human exceptionalism through birds, but also shows how science is disclosing the superpowers & perceptual worlds of other life-forms, & challenging deep-coded anthropocentrism.
3. ‘Fire: Deep-Time Thinking’, argues for ‘deep-time’ perspectives in our politics, law & our story-telling, so we can become better ancestors to future generations.
4. ‘Water: the Geography of Hope’, explores the fascinating ways in which legal and democratic structures are being re-imagined to enlarge the circle of moral consideration.
In short: How did it come to this? What have we (some of us) done? What can be done about it?
Gilgamesh, venture capital, Aristotle, Dolly Parton, Elon Musk, oil wars, whale speech, ecocide...it’s all here. The luxury of despair & the discipline of hope.
I want to speak across divides: as I heard someone put it, ‘to wish to grow old on a habitable planet is not an ideology’.
In my view, the solutions to the crises we find ourselves in lie in imagination as well as legislation; in art as well as science.
See you out there.
09 Sep 2026
Hello — Is A River Alive? is No. 1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list this week.
To celebrate, my wonderful Dad & Mum decided to thoroughly…river a copy of the book.
They went up Gasgale Gill—a steep-sided north Lakes valley between Grasmoor and Whiteside, where the water runs silver & clear & very much alive—Dad (@johntmacfarlane) pulled on his wetsuit, Mum (@rosmacf) took the camera & these glorious photos ensued.
Huge, vast, tumbling thanks to everyone here & beyond who has helped this book find so many readers. I care deeply about the rivers, ideas & people who flow through its pages — & who are now meeting readers in number.
As I travel around, I’m now signing the book using blue ink which contains the water of 105 rivers, lakes, streams and seas from across Britain and Ireland (see image 4).
This ink was mixed for me by the amazing @paul.powlesland, and the waters it contains were “woven” during the great March For Clean Water which happened in London last autumn, co-organised by the mighty @riveractionuk. Many of the participants in the March (the biggest clean water protest in the history of these islands) brought flasks and bottles of their local water. These were ceremonially mixed in Parliament Square during the rally there.
Paul gathered some of that woven water, made ink with it, and then I added a few drops of water from the Pools of Dee, high in the Cairngorms (the mountain range I know and love best), gathered for me by my father and brother on a long, hard winter pilgrimage to the Pools in February (photos here).
It’s joyful to me to sign Is A River Alive? with this special ink. It means that rivers really do run through the book. It also connects it to the rolling, roiling, inspiring river guardianship which is surging everywhere in the UK now, as people and communities come together in passion and action to revive these wounded rivers and water-bodies.
Oh — and the ink writes beautifully smoothly, too.
Hope is the thing with rivers.
08 May 2025
Hello—this week The Book of Birds by me & @jackiemorrisartist takes flight into the world. I feel a lift of the heart to be able to say this! It’s been a long while fledging: we began work on it in 2018.
The Book of Birds re-imagines the field guides & bird books Jackie & I grew up reading—& which helped us see birds for the first time. It’s also a love letter to birds & the ‘Seven Wonders’ that make them: Nest, Egg, Beak, Song, Feather, Flight & Migration.
Instead of asking ‘What is that bird?’, though, we ask ‘Who is that bird?’. We want to help readers identify birds, but also identify with them. We’ve tried, in paint & language, to pull birds back into focus & fullness & celebrate each species ‘is-ness’: what makes Dipper Dipper, or Curlew Curlew.
We live in a time of staggering avian loss. 600m birds gone from Europe in the last 50 years. 3 billion in North America. 50% of bird species in decline globally. Shifting baseline syndrome habituates us to thinner skies, quieter springs.
We have to reverse this loss. It’s not enough to love the song but forget the singers. So we’re working with the @rspb & others on campaigns, activism & change; how, in Robin Kimmerer’s phrase, to join ‘attention to intention to action’.
The Book of Birds is cousin to our first two books—The Lost Words & The Lost Spells—but different in scale. It’s big! Almost 400 pages. Jackie has painted more than 300 new artworks, in watercolour & gold leaf (echoing sacred icons): an astonishing body of work.
I’ve tried to let language sing, soar, play, glide & tumble on the page—& to find different rhythms & voices for each species: the neon scorch of Kingfisher, the aria-aura of Skylark.
A wonderful team has helped us create this book. It’s out this Thursday in the UK from @penguinbooks & in Canada by @houseofanansi; on 7 June in US from @w.w.norton.
Here are some images & films of the book & its making, inc. of Jackie’s magic den of a studio.
OK. Enough. This one’s for the birds! Please help it fly far & wide.
05 May 2026
Gingko trees grew in the mid-Jurassic — they strewed their leaves under the feet of dinosaurs.
And here they are still: living fossils, quietly unfurling their ten thousand tiny fluttering fans at the end of a street, in the corner of a park. Deep-time neighbours and tenacious survivors, who watched us arrive and will watch us leave.
This spectacular tree lives four doors down from me.
Today it is a firework display.
Tonight the first frost of the autumn is forecast. Tomorrow it’ll be standing in a pool of gold.
“One day I saw the tree with the lights in it…each cell buzzing with flame…it was less like seeing than being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.”
(Annie Dillard, from Pilgrim At Tinker Creek)
12 Nov 2026
OUT TODAY! 🌿📖 Song of the Cedars
This book isn’t just about a forest. It was also created in the forest, with the forest…and by the forest.
In 2022, we went to Ecuador’s Los Cedros Cloud Forest and made a song together. That song is now a children’s book. Unfold its pages and you’ll find the plants, animals and fungi of Los Cedros in a panorama illustrated by Ecuadorian artist Paula Terán Ospina.
On the cover are six names: five of those are the names of the humans who have visited the Los Cedros Cloud Forest and been enchanted by it. The sixth name, though, is the forest’s own.
Published by @magiccatpublishing, Song of the Cedars marks the fifth anniversary of Ecuador’s Constitutional Court decision to recognise the legal rights of Los Cedros to exist and to flourish. With this book, we are asserting the forest’s moral rights as a co-creator.
All royalties from sales of the book will go towards protecting Los Cedros. Find your copy through the link in @fungifoundation’s bio, and follow @los_cedros_fund to learn more about the forest.
Thank you to everyone who helped bring the song and the book to life, and to Los Cedros Cloud Forest, our co-creator 🌿.
📚 Robert Macfarlane (@robgmacfarlane), Paula Terán Ospina (@paulateranospina), Cosmo Sheldrake (@cosmosheldrake), Giuliana Furci (@giulifungi) and César Rodríguez-Garavito (founder of @moth_rights)
🎤 Human voices in the song @cosmosheldrake & @giulifungi
🔊 From the forest, toucan barbets, crickets 🦗, echolocating bats 🦇, howler monkeys 🐒, rustling leaves 🍂 and even a recording from beneath the soil 🪱 where a new species of mushroom was collected.
#SongOfTheCedars #LosCedros #RightsOfNature #ChildrensBooks
05 Nov 2026
Paths shining like rivers uphill after rain…
Beautiful to be on the high tops today with my son.
Light falling in rafters and discs through the cloud-base.
Water like pewter in the valleys.
Rock furled into pages by time.
Minecraft chat, of course.
A blue-watered stream patiently following its nose.
And ravens, always ravens.
30 Oct 2026
Creating in collaboration with the forest.
On the cover of the forthcoming book Song of the Cedars, the Los Cedros Cloud Forest is credited as a collaborator alongside five human contributors dedicated to protecting the rights of this invaluable ecosystem.
Following a song created by the same group, this book folds out to show a spectacular illustrated panoramic scene of the flora, fauna, and fungi of the forest. Publishing on November 5, the book also marks the fifth anniversary of the groundbreaking Ecuadorian court decision recognizing Los Cedros’ right to exist and flourish.
Learn more at the link in our bio.
Illustrations by @paulateranospina
29 Oct 2026
Hello — The World Tree, a ten-movement, seventy-minute choral work for which I wrote the libretto, was released yesterday as an album, sung by the @helsinkichamberchoir, conducted by Nils Schweckendieck & composed by Matthew Whittall.
At The World Tree’s heart is the felling of the Sycamore Gap Tree in 2023. But our work pulls the temporal frame far back, to trace the shifting tides of human-forest relations since the glaciers retreated from Northern Europe c.11,000 years ago, on through Neolithic, Roman & modern eras & then on into a speculative forest future.
Three central movements — Axis Mundi, Heartwood & Requiem — focus on the tree’s felling & the extraordinary global outpouring of feeling that accompanied it; a counterpoint to the words of the men who felled it that “it was just a tree”.
Matthew’s score is 218 pages & dazzling in its varieties & intensities. I didn’t comprehend the emotional & technical ranges of what the compound musical instrument that is twenty human voices could make, until I heard this at the world premiere in Helsinki.
Playing here you can hear “Pollen Polyphony”, which I just loved writing, imagining a constellation of voices singing up the minute traces of forests past.
The first movement, “Glacial Maximum”, imagines those first humans moving up through the young forest to where the great ice had been.
“In such a time
Who would not smudge a fingertip of pollen
Beneath a lover’s unknown eyes
As if out of each socket
Might rise, might rise
A wildwood…”
I am proud of what we have all made here. It is strange, epic, lyric & I think has a power to move listeners. You can hear it in the usual places if you’d like to set ears on it.
Plans are afoot for a performance at the Sycamore Gap in 2027.
Ursula Le Guin: “the word for world is forest”.
10 Oct 2026
🌊 𝘞𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘉𝘰𝘥𝘺 is coming to LFF Expanded 2026!
Created by Marshmallow Laser Feast in collaboration with author Robert Macfarlane, sound artist James Bulley,
and ceramicist Ludmilla Balkis, and featuring illustrations by Elena Landinez, 𝘞𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘉𝘰𝘥𝘺 is a meditative installation exploring the circulation of Water that connects all life on Earth.
Beginning deep underground, we course through the branching veins of London’s hidden Rivers, journeying outwards through Estuary to Ocean, flowing in vast seasonal water bodies that are woven with the oscillating migration of Whales, Turtles, Seals and Seabirds.
Within 𝘞𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘉𝘰𝘥𝘺 the voice of Robert Macfarlane guides us in a deep multi-sensory experience riven with spatial listening, visual poetics and an urgent call for us to reconsider our co-existence with the more-than-human world. We might then start to understand our truly symbiotic relationship with the Water that flows both in and through us.
Inspired by Robert Macfarlane’s groundbreaking book Is a River Alive?, and originally commissioned by ARTIS Amsterdam Royal Zoo, 𝘞𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘉𝘰𝘥𝘺 comes to London as the Special Presentation of LFF Expanded, the BFI London Film Festival’s programme of immersive art, extended reality and video games. Curated by @uschrauth
“We are all bodies of water.”
Astrida Neimanis
🎟️ Tickets now on sale
🗓️ 3–18 October
📍 St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London
#LFF #BritishFilmInstitute #BFI #MarshmallowLaserFeast #RobertMacfarlane @robgmacfarlane @jjbulley @ludmillaceramics @elena_landinez
22 Sep 2026
It’s our pleasure to announce that the 2026 winner of the Wainwright Prize Book of the Year is...
The Book of Birds, @jackiemorrisartist and @robgmacfarlane (@penguinhamishhamilton)
The judges described The Book of Birds as an “utterly beautiful book to treasure”, highlighting the exceptional chemistry between Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane. Its distinction lies in the way it combines artistic beauty with an urgent call to recognise and protect Britain’s endangered bird species – asking not simply what a bird is, but “who” that bird is.
#WainwrightPrize #StoriesThatConnect
17 Sep 2026
I regard musicians as magicians & am lucky to collaborate with seven of the most magic, who together form the @lwspellsongs collective.
Over the past seven years, they’ve made three albums in response to three books by me & @jackiemorrisartist, drawing on musical traditions as varied as the Senegalese kora and Gaelic blessing-songs. Some of you might know The Lost Words Blessing; it still stops me in my tracks, even after all these listens.
The newest album is called In Thin Air, it’s a response to our The Book of Birds, it’s released on 4th September, and the musicians will be performing live from 2nd-10th September in Bristol, Birmingham, Cambridge, Liverpool, Sheffield, Edinburgh and Perth. Do, do come if you can. They’re astonishing live.
Jackie will be painting live on-stage throughout; I’ll be joining the show in Cambridge (silver lamé trousers & tambourine, natch).
In Thin Air is, to my ear, an extraordinary piece of music; utterly of the now, woven like a nest from many threads (conflict, hope, love, loss); honest to the shattered times we live through and the thinning skies we move beneath, but also bright with wonder and light. It’s been a joy to be a part of its making.
The musicians are:
@jimmolyneux
@juliefowlis
@bethanyporterplease
@seckoukeitamusic
@rachelnewtonmusic
@karinepolwart
@krisdrever
Each an incredible musician in their own right; together they dazzle. I love them all.
Please put ears to their music; join them live if you can; tell others it’s happening. Follow @lwspellsongs for all the links and deets for album & tour; and @hudson_records for special edition copies of the album.
“Bells fall silent without their ringers;
It’s not enough to love the song but forget the singers.”
PS no idea why Instagram has badged this post as having AI content; no AI has gone anywhere near the making of this album. Xx
22 Aug 2026
Four humans and a cloud-forest have composed a song, and now written a book.
If you've been following our story of collaboration with Ecuador's Los Cedros Cloud Forest 🌳, you might know that this ecosystem holds a special place for us. In 2022, during an expedition organised by @robgmacfarlane as part of the fieldwork for his book Is A River Alive?, we ventured into the forest and co-created a song with it.
Now that song has turned into a children's book 📚that is also a milestone: Los Cedros Cloud Forest will have its moral rights asserted as a co-creator, one of the very few occasions a natural entity has had its moral authorship declared and recognized in the publishing world.
This book is part of a bigger mission: to extend the already established legal rights of the Los Cedros Biological Reserve, -recognized by Ecuador's Constitutional Court in 2021- into the creative domains.
You can also be part of this journey. Pre-order the signed edition of the book at the link in Fungi Foundation's bio. All royalties generated from the book will go to @los_cedros_fund in order to support its protected status.
Remember every time you listen to the song, the royalties also help support the forest!
🎤 @cosmosheldrake & @giulifungi
🔉Toucan barbets, 🦗, echo-locating🦇, howler 🐒, rustling 🍂 and even a subterranean recording of the soil 🪱
Special thanks to @magiccatpublishing, Jessica Woollard and @paulateranospina
#childrensbook #fungi #nature #rightsofnature
04 Aug 2026
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