Upland: The Strange History and Vital Future of Britain’s Mountains

Glorious . . . a beguiling history . . . Ed Douglas's achievement in this excellent book is to return a proper sense of colour and even carnival to Britain's high places . . The truth is that mountains have shaped much of our island story . . . One delight of his capacious . . . narrative is the room it leaves for delightful cameos by remarkable individuals -- Kathryn Hughes * Guardian ** Book of the Day ** * Engrossing . . . a must-read for anyone with an interest in past, present and future of Britain’s mountains . . . wonderful . . . rich in detail and incident . . . a nuanced, clear-eyed and informative picture * Scotsman * Rich and adventurous . . . always smart and well informed * Literary Review * Britain’s mountains have rich, dramatic human histories that linger to this day . . . untold, eye-opening stories of conflict and control surrounding our wildest places * Independent * The mountains, constant and unchanging on any human scale, are a good lens through which to view our preoccupations . . . Douglas’s central message is right: we cannot separate ourselves from the landscape; it is place that makes people -- Adam Weymouth * Sunday Times * A heady and exciting time-lapse of British history mapped onto the land’s topography … Highly readable and approachable . . . A fully absorbable chronicle . . . as dramatic as any Victorian novel . . . The kind of book to return to again and again * Cumbria Life * This book is completely enthralling and original – and can only have been written by someone with a profound love of our uplands. The sense of time through geology and of space through elevation gives the book an epic scale; readers are left in no doubt that uplands are a unique witness to our island story and to many of our natural predicaments. Our fragile landscapes have a fine new biographer -- Nicholas Crane, author of Latitude Deeply researched and authoritative, Douglas has produced a definitive history of the peoples, cultures and lands of our rocky isles from the most magisterial and far-seeing perspective. Every page holds a fascinating nugget – I learned so much -- Gaia Vince, author of Nomad Century Our hills and mountains, though scattered, are a kingdom of their own. Nobody has ever gathered into a book their human story, their geography, their past and their future, before. Ed Douglas has achieved this with elegance and passion -- Matthew Parris Beautifully written -- Laura Spinney, author of Proto