A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023: NATURE AND TRAVEL

For thousands of years, our ancestors held a close connection with the landscapes they lived in. They imbued it with meaning: stone monuments, sacred groves, places of pilgrimage. In our modern world we have rather lost that enchantment and intimate knowledge of place.

James Canton takes us on a journey through England seeking to see through more ancient eyes, to understand what landscape meant to those that came before us. We visit stone circles, the West Kennet long barrow, a Crusader round church and sites of religious visions. We meet the Dagenham Idol and the intricately carved Lion Man figure. We find artefacts buried in farmers' fields. There is history and meaning encoded into the lands and places we live in, if only we take the time to look.

Our natural world has never been under more threat. If we relocate our sense of wonder, veneration and awe in the landscapes we live in, we might just be better at saving it.

"A book of ghost trails, burial mounds and crop marks, of stone circles and ancient treasures rising from the soil . . . through his eyes we see the magic of discovery . . . Liminal and lyrical" - * Mail on Sunday *

"James Canton is curious. What makes a place sacred? His journey is geographical, spiritual and one of historical and prehistorical discovery. Canton, like Robert Macfarlane and others, engages friends and experts, fostering credibility but also a sense of gentle companionship" - * Countryfile *

"Canton's research (chiefly in local historical and archaeological records) and his observations paint a convincing picture of the English landscape and the people who lived in it. He assumes a role somewhere between that of an archaeologist, ghost hunter and pilgrim" - * Financial Times *

"What interests [Canton] above all is British rural sites where the evidence of the deep past still lies on or close to the surface. These are his sacred places, the landscapes in which the world can be felt to be re-enchanted. The most affecting episodes in Grounded are those that evoke a specific and individual sense of the sacred" - * Times Literary Supplement *

"One of the most luminous and illuminating books on our landscape I have read for many a year" - * Resurgence and Ecologist *

"In the mode of nature writers such as Robert Macfarlane - it has a natural flow that pulls the reader along . . . a book that felt like the kind of easygoing conversation about old ways between old places that might be had with a friend on a long country walk" - * The Past *