Walking the Bones of Britain

A thousand-mile, three-billion-year journey that tells the story of how the land beneath our feet shapes our past, present, and future from the author of The January Man and Ships of Heaven.

Travelling a thousand miles and across three billion years, Christopher Somerville, author of The January Man and Ships of Heaven, sets out to discover how the land beneath our feet shapes our past, our present, and our future.

Taking a journey of a thousand miles, Christopher Somerville begins in the far north, at the three-billion-year-old rocks of the Isle of Lewis, formed when the world was still molten, and travels south-eastwards to the furthest corner of Essex, where new land is being formed. Crossing bogs, scaling peaks, and skirting quarry pits, he unearths the stories bound up in the layers of rock beneath our feet and examines how they have influenced everything from how we farm to how we build our houses, from the Industrial Revolution to the current climate crisis.

Told with characteristic humour and insight, this gripping exploration of the British landscape and its remarkable history cannot fail to change the way you see the world beyond your door.

Somerville is a walker's writer — Nicholas Crane