Robert Macfarlane, author of The Lost Words

Robert Macfarlane is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and the author of a number of bestselling and prize-winning books including The Wild Places, The Old Ways, Holloway and Landmarks.  His work has been translated into many languages and widely adapted for film, television and radio.  The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E. M. Forster Award for Literature in 2017.  He is a word collector, mountain-climber - and he has three young children who have taught him more about the world than any book.

In support of The Lost Words initiative in Dorset, Robert wrote:

"You hold in your hands a spell-book...It took Jackie Morris and me two years to make The Lost Words together, and we did so because we wanted to try and close – just a little - the gap between childhood and the natural world in Britain. We wanted to celebrate the wonder of the everyday nature with which we share our everyday lives, in our cities and our countryside. We could never have guessed in our wildest dreams what would happen to the book - and how it would become part of a much broader, hopeful movement to re-wild childhood, led, above all, by the children themselves. Children are wondernauts; they're naturals at nature. They just need to be given the chance to be in it, with it, to weave it into their lives. We are thrilled by the inspiring, generous vision of the Dorset campaign; thrilled, too, that our book and its creatures is with your school. Here's wishing wild words and a wild world to teachers and pupils alike."