I am indebted to various institutions, chief among them Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where I am fortunate enough to hold a teaching fellowship; and the Faculty of English, Cambridge, where I hold a senior lectureship. Conversations with my students (notable among them Tom Gilliver, Anna Main, Charles Rousseau, Napper Tandy and Lewis Wynn) were vital to the development of Landmarks – as was the award of a Philip Leverhulme Prize by the Leverhulme Trust. The Trust’s trust in me, and its support – logistical and financial – of the book’s writing, has been outstanding. I am grateful also to the Cambridge University Library and the London Library.
For permission to quote from the published and unpublished work of J. A. Baker, I thank the Baker Estate and Myles Archibald at HarperCollins. Nigel Cochrane and Sandy Macmillen at the Albert Sloman Library, University of Essex, made my time in the Baker Archive both possible and pleasurable. John Fanshawe’s efforts in bringing Baker’s archive to Essex, transcribing and editing the journals, and extending our knowledge of Baker’s life and world, have been immense. John also expertly read my Baker chapter.
For permission to quote from the published and unpublished work of Jacquetta Hawkes, I am grateful to Nicolas Hawkes, as well as to Christine Finn for her permission to quote from her unpublished biography of Jacquetta Hawkes, and to Special Collections, University of Bradford Library, for access to the Jacquetta Hawkes Archive and for permission to reproduce unpublished material.
For permission to quote from the poetry of Norman MacCaig, I am grateful to the MacCaig Estate, and to Neville Moir at Polygon.
For permission to quote from the poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid, I am grateful to Carcanet Press.
For permission to quote from the work of Nan Shepherd and from his own memories of Nan, and for other kinds of support, I am grateful to her literary executor, Erlend Clouston. I am grateful also to the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland and to Dairmid Gunn for permission to quote from Neil Gunn’s letters, and to George Mackie for permission to quote from Nan’s letters to Barbara Balmer.
I sometimes wonder if I will ever find a subject other than landscape to write about, having done so for fifteen years – but soon after always conclude that it is unlikely, given that the terrain is infinite in its interest and unfathomable in its complexities. I have been circling the books and ideas at the core of Landmarks for years now; some of the chapters here have now been close to a decade in their thinking and revising. I am grateful to all those editors who have enabled and encouraged me along the way, among them Lisa Allardice, Myles Archibald, Jamie Byng, Nick Davies, Charlotte Knight, Julia Koppitz, Paul Laity, Norah Perkins, Susanna Rustin and Helen Tookey. Notably (as above), ‘A Counter-Desecration Phrasebook’ found its first expression in Towards Re-Enchantment: Place and Its Meanings, ed. Gareth Evans and Di Robson (London: ArtEvents, 2010), and ‘The Living Mountain’ began as a long essay prefacing the 2011 Canongate reissue of Nan Shepherd’s masterpiece of the same name. Fragments of ‘Hunting Life’ have their origin in my 2005 Introduction to the NYRB Classics reissue of Baker’s The Peregrine, and some paragraphs of ‘The Black Locust and the Silver Pine’ were part of an Introduction to a 2006 edition of Muir’s My First Summer in the Sierra. ‘Bastard Countryside’ and ‘Stone-Books’ both began in 2011 as essays for the Collins Nature Library on Jefferies and Hawkes respectively. I have written and spoken on Lopez and Deakin in numerous different places and at numerous different times.
Finally, above all and for ever, love and thanks to Julia, Lily, Tom and Will.
THE BEGINNING
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HAMISH HAMILTON
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
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Hamish Hamilton is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published 2015
Copyright © Robert Macfarlane, 2015
Cover artwork © Stanley Donwood
The moral right of the author has been asserted
The permissions on here constitute an extension of this copyright page
Interior wood engravings by Jonathan Gibbs
ISBN: 978-0-241-96786-7
Landmarks Page 30
