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. Seeking that lost connection, James Canton takes us on a journey across ancient England: from stone monuments to sacred groves, places of pilgrimage and sites of religious worship.

Grounded invites us to step away from our modern world, to rekindle the wonder and awe in the places we live in, to discover the history and meaning encoded into the land - if only we take the time to look.

"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 *

"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 *

"A quest to seek out the peace and the power of what [Canton] calls sacred spaces. Moving" - * Suffolk Free Press *