Robert Macfarlane

Robert Macfarlane (b. 15 August 1976) was born in Nottinghamshire and grew up in the East Midlands. He studied English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Magdalen College, Oxford, and has taught at Emmanuel College since 2002, where he is a Fellow in English. He is an experienced mountaineer and long-distance walker whose physical engagement with landscape informs every page of his writing.

Life and Career

Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination (2003) — his first book, published when he was twenty-seven — won the Guardian First Book Award and the Somerset Maugham Award. It is a cultural history of the Western fascination with mountains, tracing how the mountains that medieval Europeans regarded as monstrous became, by the nineteenth century, objects of beauty and aspiration. The book combines intellectual history with personal narrative — Macfarlane’s own experiences as a mountaineer — in a style that became his signature.

The Wild Places (2007) — an account of journeys to the last wild places in Britain and Ireland, from the beechwoods of Epping Forest to the storm-battered islands of the Scottish Hebrides — extended his range and his readership. The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (2012) is about paths — ancient trackways, pilgrimage routes, desire lines — and the way walking creates knowledge. It is his most ambitious and most beautiful book, ranging from the chalk paths of southern England to the Himalayas, from the Palestinian West Bank to the Scottish moors.

Landmarks (2015) is a work of a different kind: a celebration of the language of landscape, a glossary of the words — many of them disappearing — that English, Scots, Irish, and Welsh use to describe the natural world. The book argues that losing the words for nature means losing the ability to see nature, and that the recovery of language is itself a form of ecological restoration.

Underland: A Deep Time Journey (2019) — about the worlds beneath our feet, from Parisian catacombs to the underground rivers of the Yorkshire Dales to the nuclear-waste repositories of Scandinavia — won the Wainwright Prize and the National Outdoor Book Award. It is his darkest and most geologically minded work, extending his attention from the surface to the depths.

Major Works and Themes

Macfarlane’s great subject is the relationship between language and landscape — the way the words we use shape what we see, and the way the physical world resists and exceeds language. He writes in a tradition that includes Nan Shepherd, J.A. Baker, Roger Deakin, and Richard Mabey, but his prose — lyric, learned, attentive to etymology and to the grain of rock — is distinctly his own.

His work combines physical experience (walking, climbing, swimming, exploring) with intellectual inquiry (literary criticism, cultural history, environmental philosophy) in a way that makes the essay form feel as vigorous as the activities it describes.

Critical Reception and Legacy

Macfarlane is widely credited with revitalising British nature writing — a genre that, by the early 2000s, seemed exhausted. His books have inspired a generation of writers and readers to engage with landscape, language, and ecological consciousness. He is one of the most commercially successful serious nonfiction writers in Britain.

Key Works

• Mountains of the Mind (2003)
• The Wild Places (2007)
• The Old Ways (2012)
• Landmarks (2015)
• Underland (2019)

Collecting Macfarlane

Mountains of the Mind (2003, Granta Books UK / Pantheon US) is the key title. First editions in jacket bring $100–$400.

The Old Ways (2012, Hamish Hamilton) and Underland (2019, Hamish Hamilton) bring $50–$200.

Macfarlane signs at UK literary events and festivals. Signed copies are available across his bibliography. His commercial success means print runs are large, but signed first editions of the early titles command premiums.