LONGLISTED FOR THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RICHARD JEFFERIES AWARD
A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023

Footprints in the Woods is John Lister-Kaye's account of a year spent observing the comings and goings of otters, badgers, weasels and pine martens. This family - Mustelidae - all live in the wild at Aigas, the conservation and field study centre that has been John's home for more than forty-five years.

With the patient and meticulous care of a true naturalist, John observes and records the lives, habits and habitats of these elusive animals. Hours of careful waiting and watching in the woods and loch, the river, fields and moorland is rewarded with insight into how these animals live when unhindered by human interference; sometimes red in tooth and claw, but often playful, familial, curious and surprising.

As a boy, badgers and weasels were John's first encounter with wild animals. Now he has spent fifty years living side-by side with them in the Highlands and come to know much of their ways. Footprints in the Woods is the culmination of that long association with the Mustelidae family, a love letter to the otters, badgers, weasels and pine martens that also call Aigas home, and a reminder of the fragility of habitat and the beauty and variety we have to lose if we don't choose to actively protect it.

"Sir John Lister-Kaye's latest book reveals the real, bloody world of nature's natural-born killers. [ . . . ] In the course of more than 50 years, he has become one of Britain's most celebrated nature writers and an expert on conservation" - * The Times *

"From pine martens to weasels, John Lister-Kaye's mesmerising new book reveals the true savagery of mustelids . . . Lister-Kaye's many expert, wide-eyed descriptions of their hunts - gleaned from thousands of hours of painstaking, superhumanly silent observation - bear both the unsentimentality of a lifelong naturalist and the eloquent punch of a superior thriller-writer. [He is] not only a marvellously lucid writer but also an unusually poetic one" - * Telegraph *

"Spellbinding . . . Footprints In The Woods is a wonderfully beguiling read, much like a rapt, highly observant and yet leisurely wander through some wild woodland, with no particular aim in mind but so forgetful of your small, limited self, so happily lost in the wide world of nature, that you hear and see everything. As an evocation of the author's beloved Highlands it is second to none, and it does what all great nature writing should do: it makes you want to get out there yourself" - * Mail on Sunday *

"Sir John Lister-Kaye, a leading naturalist and conservationist, has a fine eye for detail and a poetic turn of phrase. [ . . . ] Mesmerising" - * Simple Things *

"A love letter to the otters, badgers, weasels and pine martens . . . and a reminder of the fragility of habitat and the beauty and variety we have to lose if we don't choose to actively protect it" - * Yorkshire Reporter *

"Praise for John Lister Kaye: Utterly charming and captivating" - * Sunday Times *

"Scotland's high priest of nature writing; it's charming and moving to wander along with him" - * The Times *