A brilliant blend of memoir and biography, a stunning meditation on poetry and nature, and a quiet reflection on what it means to be a father and a son

‘An absolute gem . . . I was delightfully lost by the river throughout’ Paul Whitehouse
‘Marvellous . . . The Catch leaves both its writer and its reader wonderfully "lost in water"’ Robert Macfarlane
‘Penetrating and poetic, filled with honeyed prose and thoughtful criticism’ The Times
A brilliant blend of memoir and biography, The Catch is a stunning meditation on poetry and nature, and a quiet reflection on what it means to be a father and a son.
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It is in the midst of a swirling river, casting a line, that Mark Wormald meets Ted Hughes.

He stands where the poet stood, forty years ago, because fishing was Ted Hughes’s way of breathing – and because the poet's writing has made Mark understand that it has always been his way of breathing, too.

Using Hughes’s poetry collection River and his fishing diaries as a guide, Mark returns again and again to the rivers and lakes in Britain and Ireland where the poet fished. At times, he uses Ted's fly patterns; at others his rods. It is an obsession; a fundamental connection to nature; a thrilling wildness; an elemental pursuit. But it is also a release and a consolation, as Mark fishes after the sudden death of his mother and during the slow fading of his father.

"Penetrating and poetic, filled with honeyed prose and thoughtful criticism." - The Times

"Astute and fluent, The Catch wears its learning lightly… Compelling" - Country Life

"Way above a mere fishing book, combining nature, personal recollections, biography, poetry, imagination and much more - BOOK OF THE YEAR" - Classic Angling Magazine

"Whilst Hughes’s love for angling is relatively well-known, Wormald makes a deep and sustained claim for the link between Hughes’s poetic thinking process and the act of fishing. … [But] The carrying streams of this book are not only those of Hughes’s life, and those of his family and friends, but of Wormald’s too. … Wormald’s own prose is sprung and striking [and] The Catch becomes a subtle meditation on what it is to be a father, a son, a brother." - Caught by the River

"Wormald’s scene-setting and imaginative, close reading of the poems uncover new aspects of Hughes and his work, which is no easy task … Hughes thought the all-absorbing experience of fishing was much like writing poetry, and such descriptions will have the fishermen among this book’s readership nodding along." - The Mail on Sunday

"Electrifyingly good" - London Review Bookshop

"A beautiful book … Wormald is excellent at prising apart Hughes the myth from Hughes the man." - The Critic

"A profoundly reflective examination of Hughes’s fishing life, layered over with Wormald’s own … Wormald has an engaging, lyrical style, by which it’s easy to be beguiled into appreciative enjoyment and even wonder." - The Field

"As a feat of scholarship, angling, and creative empathy, this book is an extraordinary achievement" - Dublin Review of Books

"Beyond biographical and instead a complete immersion into the mind and life of one of our greatest writers … A dip well worth taking" - Fallon's Angler