Footprints in the Woods: The Secret Life of Forest and Riverbank

by John Lister-Kaye

Overview

The elusive lives of otters, badgers, weasels and more are rendered in John Lister-Kaye's enchanting lyrical style

A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023: NATURE AND TRAVEL

Footprints in the Woods is John Lister-Kaye's charming account of a year spent with otters, badgers, weasels and pine martens. This family - Mustelidae - all live in the wild at Aigas, the conservation and field study centre in the Highlands that he calls home.

With fifty years of experience living side-by-side with these creatures and the patience of a true naturalist, John reveals the lives of these elusive animals; sometimes red in tooth and claw, but often playful, familial, curious and surprising.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781838858803
Publisher:	Canongate Books
Publication date:	09/03/2024
Edition description:	Main
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	1,035,533
Product dimensions:	5.08(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Sir John Lister-Kaye is one of Britain's best-known naturalists and conservationists. He is the author of eleven books on wildlife and the environment, including The Dun Cow Rib, shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize, and Gods of the Morning, winner of the Richard Jefferies Award for Nature Writing. John has lectured on the natural environment all over the world. He has served prominently in the RSPB, the Nature Conservancy Council, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Wildlife Trust. In 2003 he was awarded an OBE for services to nature conservation and in 2016 he was awarded the Royal Scottish Geographical Society's Geddes Environment Medal. He lives with his wife and family among the mountains of the Scottish Highlands, where he runs the world-famous Aigas Field Centre.

lister-kaye.co.uk | aigas.co.uk

Editorial Reviews

"This book conjures otters, badgers, pine martens and weasels right onto the page, in language that is deft, vivid and alive"

JAY GRIFFITHS

"I am addicted to the writings of John Lister-Kaye"

JOANNA LUMLEY

"A great naturalist"

CHRIS PACKHAM

"Lister-Kaye is the real thing: a peerless observer who is just as much part of the land as his beloved badgers . . . Marvellous"

CHARLES FOSTER

"Renowned conservationist John Lister-Kaye finds as much drama in the creatures of his garden in the Highlands as watching polar bears cross frozen ice packs near the North Pole . . . He has fallen in love with these moments of everyday adventure"

Sunday Mail

"Praise for John Lister Kaye: Utterly charming and captivating"

Sunday Times

"Spellbinding . . . Footprints In The Woods is a wonderfully beguiling read. Second to none, it does what all great nature writing should do: it makes you want to get out there yourself"

Mail on Sunday

"Sir John Lister-Kaye's latest book reveals the real, bloody world of nature's natural-born killers. [ . . . ] In the course of more than 50 years, he has become one of Britain's most celebrated nature writers and an expert on conservation"

The Times

"John Lister-Kaye's mesmerising new book reveals the true savagery of mustelids . . . bears both the unsentimentality of a lifelong naturalist and the eloquent punch of a superior thriller-writer"

Telegraph

"If only we could all be as attentive to the life around us as John Lister-Kaye. No one writes as movingly, or with such transporting poetic skills, about encounters with wild creatures"

HELEN MACDONALD

"A love letter to the otters, badgers, weasels and pine martens . . . and a reminder of the fragility of habitat and the beauty and variety we have to lose if we don't choose to actively protect it"

Yorkshire Reporter

"Sir John Lister-Kaye, a leading naturalist and conservationist, has a fine eye for detail and a poetic turn of phrase. [ . . . ] Mesmerising"

Simple Things

"John Lister-Kaye is one of the most joyful, inspirational naturalists I know"

KATE HUMBLE