Cornerstones: Subterranean Writings – from Dartmoor to the Arctic Circle

However concealed it may be, Britain’s bedrock geology profoundly determines what we see around us – not just in terms of landforms but our built environment as well. From Aberdeen, nicknamed the ‘Granite City’, to Bath, constructed of its own eponymous warm, honey-coloured limestone, rocks shape the world around us.

In Cornerstones some of the UK’s leading landscape and nature writers consider the depth of their relationships with the ground beneath their feet. Distinguished by a strong sense of place and characterised by close observation, these essays take the reader out into the landscape and convey the tactile heft, grain and rub of the rock, showing how it shapes the landscapes we all too often take for granted.

Adapted from the successful BBC Radio 3 series, Cornerstones explores how different rock types give rise to their own distinct flora and fauna, and even affect the food we eat. Some of the authors express a sense of awe in the face of the abyss of time that is locked into the lie of the land, a sense that jostles up against our own fleeting encounters with it. For example, Sara Maitland tries to grasp the extraordinary journey through space and time that’s been undertaken by Lewisian gneiss, one of the most ancient of rocks found in the UK, while Alan Garner captures the ways in which flint has enabled and accompanied human evolution, ever since our ancestors walked out of Africa with it, stone in hand.