Robert Macfarlane (writer)

Macfarlane was born in Halam in Nottinghamshire, and attended Nottingham High School.{{Cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/culture/2003/12/robert_macfarlane_first_book_award.shtml |title=Robert Macfarlane wins book award |publisher=BBC |date=December 2003 |access-date=31 December 2008}} He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and Magdalen College, Oxford. He began a PhD at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 2000, and in 2001 was elected a Fellow of the college.

His father John Macfarlane is a respiratory physician who co-authored the CURB-65 score of pneumonia in 2003. His brother James is also a consultant physician in respiratory medicine. He is married to Julia Lovell, and has three children.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}} His grandfather was the British Diplomat and mountaineer Edward Peck.https://x.com/RobGMacfarlane/status/873482107460476929

Macfarlane's first book, Mountains of the Mind, was published in 2003 and won the Guardian First Book Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. It was shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. It is an account of the development of Western attitudes to mountains and precipitous landscapes, and takes its title from a line by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. The book asks why people, including Macfarlane, are drawn to mountains despite their obvious dangers, and examines the powerful and sometimes fatal hold that mountains can come to have over the imagination. The Irish Times described the book as "a new kind of exploration writing, perhaps even the birth of a new genre, which demands a new category of its own."{{Cite news |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/peak-season-1.358558 |title=Peak season |newspaper=The Irish Times |access-date=2019-05-05}}

Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality in Nineteenth-Century Literature was published in March 2007.{{cite book |last1=Macfarlane |first1=Robert |title=Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality in Nineteenth-Century Literature |date=8 March 2007 |orig-date=Published online 1 January 2009 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |isbn=9780199296507 |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/7201 |access-date=11 March 2025 |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199296507.001.0001 |url-access=registration |ref=OriginalCopy}} In the book, Macfarlane examines originality and plagiarism in English literature between 1859 and 1900,{{cite journal |last1=Jensen |first1=Meg |title=Review of 'Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality in Nineteenth-century Literature' by Robert Macfarlane |journal=The Modern Language Review |date=July 2008 |volume=103 |issue=3 |pages=839–840 |doi=10.2307/20467941 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20467941 |access-date=11 March 2025 |publisher=Modern Humanities Research Association |location=Cambridge |jstor=20467941 |url-access=registration |ref=Jensen08}} and explores the changing understanding of originality and self seen in Romantic and Victorian literature.{{cite journal |last1=Mazzeo |first1=Tilar J. |title=Review of 'Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality in Nineteenth-century Literature' by Robert Macfarlane |journal=The Review of English Studies |date=8 October 2007 |volume=58 |issue=237 |pages=750–751 |doi=10.1093/res/hgm068 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4501681 |url-access=registration |jstor=4501681 |access-date=11 March 2025 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |ref=Mazzeo07}} He presents two theories of literary originality: creatio,A related term exists in religious cosmology. meaning creation 'from nothing', and inventio,A related term exists in rhetoric. meaning creation based on "inventive reuse".{{sfn|Jensen|2008|p=839|ref=Jensen08}}{{sfn|Macfarlane|2007|p=8|ref=OriginalCopy}} Macfarlane argues that a key element of English literature during the nineteenth century was a gradual rejection of creatio in favour of prioritising inventio.{{sfn|Mazzeo|2007|p=750|ref=Mazzeo07}} The book includes discussion of the works of Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, Charles Reade, Lionel Johnson and George Henry Lewes.{{sfn|Jensen|2008|p=839|ref=Jensen08}}{{cite journal |last1=Baker |first1=William |title=Review of 'Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality in Nineteenth-century Literature' by Robert Macfarlane |journal=The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America |date=September 2008 |volume=102 |issue=3 |pages=403–405 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24293635 |access-date=11 March 2025 |publisher=The University of Chicago Press |location=Chicago |doi=10.1086/pbsa.102.3.24293635 |jstor=24293635 |url-access=registration |ref=Baker08}} Original Copy was positively received by both academic and journalistic reviewers.{{cite news |last1=Grovier |first1=Kelly |title=I could write that at a pinch |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/mar/18/fiction.shakespeare |url-status=live |access-date=11 March 2025 |work=The Observer |publisher=The Guardian |date=19 March 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241204113549/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/mar/18/fiction.shakespeare |archive-date=4 December 2024 |ref=Grovier07}} In a 2008 review, Meg Jensen described the book as arguing in favour of an "open and collaborative response of authors to works of the past." Jensen noted that this view diverged from that of Macfarlane's fellow Pembroke College alumnus Harold Bloom, whose 1973 book The Anxiety of Influence interpreted "literary inheritance as a burden that must be concealed and negotiated".{{sfn|Jensen|2008|p=839|ref=Jensen08}}

The Wild Places was published in September 2007, and describes a series of journeys made in search of the wildness that remains in Britain and Ireland.{{cite book | title = The Wild Places | isbn = 978-1862079410 | last = Macfarlane | first = Robert | year=2007 | publisher = Granta Books | page = 340}} The book won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature, the Scottish Arts Council Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award, and the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Festival, North America's equivalent of the Boardman Tasker Prize.{{Cite web|url=http://www.banffcentre.ca/mountainculture/festivals/2008/books/ |title=2008 Book Awards |publisher=The Banff Centre |access-date=31 December 2008}} It became a best-seller in Britain and The Netherlands, and was shortlisted for six further prizes, including the Dolman Best Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and North America's Orion Book Award, a prize founded "to recognize books that deepen our connection to the natural world, present new ideas about our relationship with nature, and achieve excellence in writing."http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/mag/3003/ orionmagazine.org The Wild Places was adapted for television by the BBC as an episode of the BBC Two Natural World series broadcast in February 2010; the film later won a Wildscreen Award.[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qsxy5 Natural World] Retrieved 14 February 2010

The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot, the third in the "loose trilogy of books about landscape and the human heart"{{cn|date=March 2025}} begun by Mountains of the Mind and The Wild Places, was published in June 2012. The book describes the years Macfarlane spent following "old ways" (pilgrimage paths, sea-roads, prehistoric trackways, ancient rights of way) in south-east England, north-west Scotland, Spain, Sichuan and Palestine. Its guiding spirit is the early-twentieth-century writer and poet, Edward Thomas, and its chief subject is the reciprocal shaping of people and place.

The Old Ways was in the bestseller lists for six months. It was acclaimed as a "tour de force" by William Dalrymple in The Observer.{{cite news| url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/10/old-ways-robert-macfarlane-review | location=London | work=The Guardian | first=William | last=Dalrymple | title=The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane – review | date=10 June 2012}} It was chosen as Book of the Year by John Banville,{{cite news| url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/25/books-of-the-year-2012 | location=London | work=The Guardian | title=Books of the year 2012 | date=25 November 2012}} Philip Pullman,{{cite AV media|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8tT_VvxXv4 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211221/X8tT_VvxXv4 |archive-date=2021-12-21 |url-status=live|title=Blackwell's Books of the Year: Guest Choices - Philip Pullman (1 of 2)|date=22 November 2012|work=YouTube |access-date= 2015-05-15}}{{cbignore}} Jan Morris, John Gray, Antony Beevor, and Dan Stevens among others. In the UK, it was joint winner of the Dolman Prize for Travel Writing, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize (the "non-fiction Booker"),{{cite web|url=http://www.thesamueljohnsonprize.co.uk/node/239|title=Shortlist for 2012 Samuel Johnson Prize announced - Samuel Johnson Prize|work=thesamueljohnsonprize.co.uk |access-date= 2015-05-15}} the Jan Michalski Prize for World Literature, the Duff Cooper Prize for Non-Fiction, the Warwick Prize for Writing, the Waterstones Book of the Year,{{cite web|url=http://blog.waterstones.com/2012/10/waterstones-book-of-the-year-shortlist-announced/|title=Waterstones Book of the Year shortlist announced...|work=waterstones.com|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121227121421/http://blog.waterstones.com/2012/10/waterstones-book-of-the-year-shortlist-announced/|archive-date=27 December 2012|df=dmy-all}} and three other prizes. In the US, it was shortlisted for the Orion Book Award.

Landmarks, a book that celebrates and defends the language of landscape, was published in the UK in March 2015. A version of its first chapter, published in The Guardian as The Word-Hoard,{{Cite web |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/27/robert-macfarlane-word-hoard-rewilding-landscape |title=The word-hoard: Robert Macfarlane on rewilding our language of landscape |website=The Guardian |date=27 February 2015 |access-date=2019-05-05}} went viral, and the book became a Sunday Times number one bestseller. It was shortlisted for The Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. Landmarks is described on the cover as "a field guide to the literature of nature, and a vast glossary collecting thousands of the remarkable terms used in dozens of the languages and dialects of Britain and Ireland to describe and denote aspects of terrain, weather, and nature". Each of the book's chapters explores the landscapes and style of a writer or writers, as Macfarlane travels to meet farmers, sailors, walkers, glossarians, artists, poets and others who have developed intense and committing relationships with their chosen places. The chapter of the book concerning Nan Shepherd and the Cairngorm mountains was adapted for television by BBC4 and BBC Scotland. Macfarlane's detailed writing style, and his frequent references to dialect vocabulary, were satirised in a February 2016 edition of Private Eye by Craig Brown in the magazine's regular "Diary" feature. Landmarks was published in the US in August 2016. It was described by Tom Shippey in The Wall Street Journal as a book that "teaches us to love our world, even the parts of it that we have neglected. Mr Macfarlane is the great nature writer, and nature poet, of this generation."{{Cite news |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-you-cant-say-where-you-are-1470432322 |title=Why You Can't Say Where You Are - WSJ |website=Wall Street Journal |date=5 August 2016 |access-date=2019-05-05|last1=Shippey |first1=Tom }}

In May 2016 Macfarlane published The Gifts of Reading, a short book about gifts, stories and the unexpected consequences of generosity. All work for the book was given for free, and all moneys raised were donated to MOAS, the Migrant Offshore Aid Station, to save refugee lives.

With the artist Jackie Morris, Macfarlane published The Lost Words: A Spell Book in October 2017. The book became what the Guardian called 'a cultural phenomenon',{{Cite web |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/10/the-lost-words-campaign-delivers-nature-spellbook-to-scottish-schools |title=The Lost Words campaign delivers nature 'spellbook' to Scottish schools |website=The Guardian |date=10 February 2018 |access-date=2019-05-05}} winning Children's Book of the Year at the British Book Awards jointly with The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.{{Cite web |url=https://www.thebookseller.com/british-book-awards/winners/2018 |title=2018 Awards {{!}} The Bookseller |access-date=2019-05-05}} The "lost" words of the book's title are twenty of the names for everyday nature—from "Acorn" through to "Wren" by way of "Bluebell", "Kingfisher", "Lark" and "Otter"—that were controversially dropped from inclusion in the Oxford Junior Dictionary due to under-use by children. Grassroots campaigns sprang up to raise money to place copies of the book in every primary and special school in all of Scotland,{{Cite web |url=https://www.thebookseller.com/news/campaign-give-lost-words-scottish-primary-schools-729336 |title=Campaign raises £25k to give The Lost Words to Scottish primary schools |website=The Bookseller |access-date=2019-05-05}} half of England and a quarter of Wales.

Funds were also raised to place a copy in every hospice in Britain. The book is used by charities and carers working with dementia sufferers, refugees, survivors of domestic abuse, childhood cancer patients, and people in terminal care. It has been adapted for dance, outdoor theatre, choral music and classical music. In 2018 the new Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital at Stanmore opened its new building with four levels decorated with art and poems from The Lost Words.{{Cite web |url=http://www.jackiemorris.co.uk/blog/how-a-book-became-a-building/ |title=How a book became a building |last=Morris |first=Jackie|date=30 November 2018 }} It was the inspiration for Spell Songs, a folk music concert and album by musicians including Karine Polwart, Julie Fowlis and Kris Drever.

Underland: A Deep Time Journey was published in May 2019.{{Cite book |url=https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/560/56082/underland/9780241143803.html |title=Underland |date=27 August 2020 |publisher=Penguin}} It is a book about the deep-time pasts and futures of the Earth, as revealed by mythical underworlds and real subterranean journeys.{{Cite web |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/08/underland-by-robert-macfarlane-review |title=Underland by Robert Macfarlane review – a dazzling journey into deep time |first=William |last=Dalrymple |work=The Guardian |date=8 May 2019 }} The book was serialized on BBC Radio 4 as the Book of the Week for 29 April - 3 May 2019.{{Cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004lh3 |title=Book of the Week: Underland |publisher=BBC }}

In collaboration with the director Jen Peedom, the cinematographer Renan Ozturk and the composer Richard Tognetti, Macfarlane worked on the film Mountain,{{cite web |title=Mountain review: a sublime rush of adrenaline and orchestral beauty from the director of Sherpa |date=2017-06-13 |website=The Guardian |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230605111057/https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jun/13/mountain-a-sublime-rush-of-adrenaline-and-orchestral-beauty-from-the-director-of-sherpa |archive-date=2023-06-05 |url-status=live |url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jun/13/mountain-a-sublime-rush-of-adrenaline-and-orchestral-beauty-from-the-director-of-sherpa}} which premiered with a live performance from the Australian Chamber Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House in June 2017. Macfarlane's script was voiced by Willem Dafoe. Mountain became the highest-grossing Australian documentary of all time,{{cite news | url=http://if.com.au/jen-peedoms-mountain-climbs-australia-day-pioneers-premium-vod/ | title=Jen Peedom's 'Mountain' climbs while 'Australia Day' pioneers premium VOD | newspaper=If Magazine | date=25 September 2017 }} and won three Australian Academy Awards.{{Cite web |url=https://www.aacta.org/aacta-awards/winners-and-nominees/ |title=Winners & Nominees {{!}} AACTA |access-date=2019-05-05}}

He has also written with same director and writer Jennifer Peedom and co-director and writer Joseph Nizeti for the movie River (2022). The film includes Willem Dafoe as a narrator.{{Cite AV media |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14222534/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_cst_sm |title=River (2021) - IMDb |access-date=2025-01-24 |via=www.imdb.com}}

With the Oscar-nominated composer Hauschka and the director Rob Petit, Macfarlane made Upstream, a film set in the Cairngorm mountains in winter.

Macfarlane's 2012 book Holloway was adapted into a short film shot on Super-8 by the film-maker Adam Scovell.

As a lyricist, librettist and spoken-word performer, Macfarlane has collaborated with numerous musicians. With his close friend the musician-singer-actor Johnny Flynn, he wrote two albums: Lost In The Cedar Wood (2021) and The Moon Also Rises (2023). He and Flynn adapted Lost In The Cedar Wood into a two-person "story-song" show, which opened at the Globe Theatre in London in January 2022, before a sell-out tour later that year.{{cite web | url=https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/lost-in-the-cedar-wood-johnny-flynn-robert-macfarlane-2022/ | title=Lost in the Cedar Wood: Johnny Flynn & Robert Macfarlane | What's on }} In May 2024, the pair toured a full-length sell-out show called "The River Calls", supported by the "River Band".{{cite web | url=https://www.coolmusicandthings.co.uk/2024/05/live-johnny-flynn-and-robert-macfarlane.html | title=LIVE: Johnny Flynn and Robert Macfarlane - River Calls tour (May 2024) }}

In November 2022 he began working with musician Hayden Thorpe, former frontman of band Wild Beasts, on an adaptation of Macfarlane's book Ness into a full-length album. Thorpe released Ness with Domino Records in September 2024, and toured the album in the UK and Europe, with Macfarlane sometimes appearing as co-performer.{{cite web | url=https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/contemporary/ness-with-hayden-thorpe-and-robert-macfarlane/ | title='Ness' with Hayden Thorpe and Robert Macfarlane • Contemporary • Kings Place }} The first live performances of the album were held on the former nuclear-weapons testing site of Orford Ness, which inspired both book and album.https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2024-06-11/ex-cold-war-weapons-testing-site-to-host-live-gigs A defused WE.177 nuclear weapon was placed centrally in the audience.

In June 2012, Macfarlane wrote the libretto to a "jazz opera" called Untrue Island, composed by the double-bassist Arnie Somogyi, and performed in a former nuclear weapons storage hangar on Orford Ness.{{cite news| url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/jul/08/untrue-island-orford-ness-macfarlane | location=London | work=The Guardian | first=Robert | last=MacFarlane | title=Robert Macfarlane's Untrue Island: the voices of Orford Ness | date=8 July 2012}}

In January 2025 The Times reported that Macfarlane had recently completed work on the libretto for a full-length choral work called The World Tree, in part a "requiem for the [felled] Sycamore Gap tree", to be premiered in Helsinki by the Helsinki Chamber Choir in November 2025.{{cite web | url=https://www.thetimes.com/uk/arts/article/nature-writer-requiem-sycamore-gap-tree-5pcrhm206 | title=Nature writer's requiem for the Sycamore Gap tree | date=30 January 2025 }}

Macfarlane is a nature writer in the broadest sense, part of a tradition of writing about landscape, place, travel, and nature that includes John Muir, Richard Jefferies and Edward Thomas, as well as contemporary figures such as John McPhee, Rebecca Solnit, Annie Dillard, Barry Lopez and his friend Roger Deakin. He is associated with other walker-writers including Patrick Leigh Fermor, Nan Shepherd and Laurie Lee, and seen as one of a number of recent British writers who have provoked a new critical and popular interest in writing about landscape.{{Cite news|author=Boyd Tonkin |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/call-of-the-wild-britains-nature-writers-870367.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080729021247/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/call-of-the-wild-britains-nature-writers-870367.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=29 July 2008 |title=Call of the wild: Britain's nature writers |work=The Independent |date=18 July 2008 |access-date=31 December 2008 | location=London}} His interests in topography, ecology and the environment have been explored in his books but also through essays, notably his Common Ground series which was published in The Guardian in 2005.{{Cite news| url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/series/commonground | work=The Guardian | location=London | date=21 July 2008 | access-date=22 May 2010 | title=Common ground}}

He has also published many reportage and travel essays in magazines, especially Granta and Archipelago, as well as numerous introductory essays to reissues of lost and neglected classics of landscape and nature writing from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, notably J. A. Baker (The Peregrine) and Nan Shepherd (The Living Mountain and In The Cairngorms).

In 2018 Macfarlane co-edited, with Chris Packham and Patrick Barkham, A People's Manifesto For Wildlife, arguing for urgent and large-scale change in Britain's relationship with nature.{{Cite web |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/chris-packham-wildlife-uk-extinction-animals-shooting-pesticides-peoples-manifesto-a8543781.html |title='People's manifesto' to save British wildlife from 'mass extinction in our own backyard' launched by Chris Packham |website=Independent|date=19 September 2018 }} 10,000 people marched on Whitehall to deliver the manifesto to DEFRA. He has been involved with the Sheffield tree-protectors campaign, fighting the unnecessary felling of thousands of street trees in the city. Macfarlane wrote 'Heartwood', a poem for the protestors, which was set to music, flyposted and subvertised across Sheffield,{{Cite web |url=https://twitter.com/robgmacfarlane/status/1062437170852577280 |title=Robert Macfarlane on Twitter |access-date=2019-05-05}} and hung as a 'charm' around endangered trees.

He is a patron of the Outdoor Swimming Society, the Outlandia Project, ONCA (One Network for Conservation and the Arts), and Gateway To Nature, a Lottery-funded mental-health initiative designed to improve access to nature for vulnerable groups and individuals. He is a founding Trustee of the charity Action For Conservation, which works to inspire a lifelong engagement with conservation in 12–17 year olds, working especially with schools with high pupil premium levels.

Most of Macfarlane's books have been jacketed with original work by the artist Stanley Donwood, known for his close association with the band Radiohead, exceptions include his book The Lost Words, for example, which was illustrated by Jackie Morris. Macfarlane also collaborated with Donwood and writer Dan Richards on Holloway, published in an edition of 277 by Quive-Smith Press in 2012,{{cite web |url=http://www.slowlydownward.com/ahway.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120702141423/http://www.slowlydownward.com/ahway.html |archive-date=2 July 2012 |title=I N T H E H O L L O W A Y}} and a trade edition by Faber & Faber in May 2013, which became a Sunday Times best-seller. Macfarlane and Donwood collaborated on an edition of Thomas Hardy's poems published by The Folio Society in 2021. Macfarlane selected and introduced 109 poems for the edition with Donwood providing the illustrations.{{Cite web |title=The Folio Society - Collected Poems by Thomas Hardy |url=https://www.hardysociety.org/oxo/386/the-folio-society-collected-poems-by-thomas-hardy/ |access-date=2022-05-30 |website=www.hardysociety.org |language=en-GB}}

His work has been involved with the music of contemporary musicians including Johnny Flynn,{{cite web|url=http://thegirloutdoors.co.uk/2013/10/17/interview-johnny-flynn-on-the-lure-of-the-great-outdoors/|title=Interview: Johnny Flynn on the lure of the great outdoors|work=THE GIRL OUTDOORS|date=17 October 2013}}{{Cite web |title=Robert Macfarlane {{!}} Writers' Trust of Canada |url=https://www.writerstrust.com/authors/robert-macfarlane/ |access-date=2025-01-24 |website=Robert Macfarlane {{!}} Writers' Trust of Canada |language=en}} Frank Turner, The Memory Band, Grasscut, Julie Fowlis and Karine Polwart. He co-wrote the song Coins for Eyes with Flynn for the 9th series of the BBC programme Digging for Britain.{{Cite tweet |url-access=limited |access-date=28 August 2023 |title=Register |user=johnnyflynnhq |number=1478369788133101571 |url=https://twitter.com/johnnyflynnhq/status/1478369788133101571}}

He has designed with Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson a steel pool installation planned to be on the beach of Silecroft in Cumbria as part of a new art program for Lake District Coast. The oval basin which will fill up twice a day with sea water during high tide will reflect the sky and be viewed from an observatory platform during low tide when the sea levels lower exposing the basin. The form of the basin is inspired by Neolithic cup and ring engravings found on boulders in the district and elsewhere in Europe.{{Cite web |last=Harris |first=Gareth |date=2023-02-27 |title=Olafur Eliasson to create major new land art project on UK coast |url=https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/02/27/olafur-eliasson-to-create-major-new-land-art-project-on-uk-coast |access-date=2025-01-24 |website=The Art Newspaper - International art news and events |language=en}}{{Cite web |last= |first= |date=2023-03-01 |title=Olafur Eliasson is creating a 98-foot-long 'mirror' for the British seaside |url=https://thespaces.com/olafur-eliasson-is-creating-a-98-foot-long-mirror-for-the-british-seaside/#:~:text=England's%20Cumbria%20coast%20will%20soon,' |access-date=2025-01-24 |website=The Spaces |language=en-US}}

• 2003: Guardian First Book Award, winner, Mountains of the Mind{{cite news |url= https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/dec/05/books.guardianfirstbookaward2003 |author=John Ezard |work=The Guardian |title=Mountain man wins Guardian book prize |date=5 December 2003 |access-date=6 November 2012 |location=London}}
• 2004: Somerset Maugham Award, winner, Mountains of the Mind{{Cite web|title=Society of Authors' Awards {{!}} The Society of Authors|url=https://www.societyofauthors.org/Prizes/Fiction/Somerset-Maugham/Past-winners|access-date=2022-01-20|website=www.societyofauthors.org|date=8 May 2020 }}
• 2004: Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, winner, Mountains of the Mind{{Cite web|last=team|first=Code8|title=Robert Macfarlane|url=http://www.youngwriteraward.com/book/robert-macfarlane/|access-date=2022-01-20|website=Young Writer of the Year Award|language=en-GB}}
• 2007: Boardman-Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature, winner, The Wild Places{{Cite web|title=2007|url=http://www.boardmantasker.com/2007|access-date=2022-01-20|website=The Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature|language=en-US}}
• 2008: Grand Prize Banff Mountain Festival, winner, The Wild Places{{Cite web |url=https://www.banffcentre.ca/sites/default/files/Banff%20Mountain%20Film%20and%20Book%20Festival/Books/2008%20Book%20Competition%20winners_Archive.pdf |title=2008 Banff Mountain Book Competition Awards |access-date=20 January 2022 |website=Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity}}
• 2008: Scottish Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award, winner, The Wild Places{{Cite web |title=Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year {{!}} Book awards {{!}} LibraryThing |url=https://www.librarything.com/bookaward/Scottish+Arts+Council+Book+of+the+Year |access-date=2022-01-20 |website=www.librarything.com}}
• 2011: Philip Leverhulme Prize in Modern European Languages and Literature{{Cite web|title=Philip Leverhulme Prizes 2011 {{!}} The Leverhulme Trust|url=https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/philip-leverhulme-prizes-2011|access-date=2022-01-20|website=www.leverhulme.ac.uk}}
• 2011: Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature{{Cite web |date=2023-09-01 |title=Macfarlane, Robert |url=https://rsliterature.org/fellows/robert-macfarlane/,%20https://rsliterature.org/fellows/robert-macfarlane/ |access-date=2025-07-01 |website=Royal Society of Literature |language=en-GB}}
• 2012: Samuel Johnson Prize, shortlist, The Old Ways{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/05/six-magisterial-shortlist-samuel-johnson-prize |author=Alison Flood |work=The Guardian |title=Six books to 'change our view of the world' on shortlist for non-fiction prize |date=5 October 2012 |access-date=5 October 2012 |location=London}}
• 2013: Dolman Best Travel Book Award, winner, The Old Ways{{cite web |url=http://www.authorsclub.co.uk/?page_id=659 |title=2013 winner |website=authorsclub.co.uk |access-date=24 December 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141225013835/http://www.authorsclub.co.uk/?page_id=659 |archive-date=25 December 2014 |df=dmy-all}}
• 2013: Jan Michalski Prize for Literature, finalist, The Old Ways{{cite web |url=http://www.fondation-janmichalski.com/en/prix-jan-michalski/edition-2013/ |title=Edition 2013 |publisher=Jan Michalski Foundation |access-date=14 September 2013}}
• 2013: Warwick Prize for Writing, shortlist, The Old Ways{{Cite web|title=Warwick Prize for Writing shortlist announced|url=https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/warwick_prize_for_writing_shortlist_announced1/|access-date=2022-01-20|website=warwick.ac.uk}}
• 2015: Hay Festival Medal for Prose, Landmarks{{Cite web|url=https://www.hayfestival.com/medals|title = Medals – Hay Festival}}
• 2015: Samuel Johnson Prize, shortlist, Landmarks{{cite web |url=http://www.thesamueljohnsonprize.co.uk/news/samuel-johnson-prize-non-fiction-2015-shortlist |title=The 2015 Shortlist |publisher=The Samuel Johnson Prize |date=11 October 2015 |access-date=3 November 2015}}
• 2017: British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year, The Lost Words{{Cite web|title=2018 Winners {{!}} The Bookseller|url=https://www.thebookseller.com/british-book-awards/winners/2018|access-date=2022-01-20|website=www.thebookseller.com}}
• 2017: E. M. Forster Award for Literature, American Academy of Arts and Letters{{Cite web|title=Awards – American Academy of Arts and Letters|url=https://artsandletters.org/awards/|access-date=2022-01-20|website=artsandletters.org}}
• 2019: Wainwright Prize, Underland{{Cite web|url=https://wainwrightprize.com/2019-winner/|title=2019 Winner {{!}} The Wainwright Prize Golden Beer Prize|language=en-US|access-date=2019-08-15}}
• 2019: NDR Kultur Sachbuchpreis, Underland{{cite news

| title = Robert Macfarlane erhält Sachbuchpreis von NDR Kultur

| work = Focus

| date = 11 November 2019

| url = https://www.focus.de/regional/hannover/auszeichnungen-robert-macfarlane-erhaelt-sachbuchpreis-von-ndr-kultur_id_11349342.html

| access-date = 11 December 2019 }}

• 2023: $75,000 Writers' Trust Weston International Award for career achievement in non-fiction[https://www.cbc.ca/books/british-writer-robert-macfarlane-wins-inaugural-75k-weston-international-award-1.6883877 "British writer Robert Macfarlane wins inaugural $75K Weston International Award"]. CBC Books, June 22, 2023.
• 2024: Blue Metropolis Planet Earth Literature Prize for a body of work {{cite web | url=https://themontrealeronline.com/2024/04/blue-metropolis-international-literary-festival-april-25-28-2024/#:~:text=Underland%3A%20A%20Deep%20Time%20Journey,Metropolis%20Planet%20Literature%20Prize%20recipient | title=Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival|date= April 25-28, 2024|website=The Montrealer }}

{{Incomplete list|date=July 2020}}

• {{cite book |publisher=Granta Books and Pantheon Books |isbn=9780375421808 |title=Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination |location=London and New York |year=2003}}
• {{cite book |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780199296507 |title=Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality in Nineteenth-Century Literature |location=Oxford |year=2007}}
• {{cite book |publisher=Granta Books and Penguin Books |isbn=9781862079410 |title=The Wild Places |location=London and New York |year=2007}}
• {{cite book |publisher=Penguin Hamish Hamilton and Viking |isbn=9780670025114 |title=The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot |location=London and New York |year=2012}}
• {{cite book |publisher=Faber & Faber |title=Holloway |location=London |year=2013}}
• {{cite book |publisher=Penguin Hamish Hamilton and Viking |title=Landmarks |location=London and New York |year=2015}}
• {{cite book |publisher=Penguin UK |title=The Gifts of Reading |location=London |year=2016}}
• {{cite book |publisher=Hamish Hamilton |title=The Lost Words |year=2017}}
• {{cite book |publisher=Hamish Hamilton |title=Underland: A Deep Time Journey |year=2019 |isbn=9780241143803 }}
• {{cite book |publisher=Penguin UK |title=Ness |location=London |year=2019 |isbn=9780241396568}}
• {{cite book |publisher=House of Anansi Press |title=The Lost Spells |year=2020 |isbn=9781487007799}}
• Is a River Alive? (2025)

{{reflist |group="note"}}

{{Reflist}}

• [https://www.emma.cam.ac.uk/contact/fellows/?id=172 Robert Macfarlane] at Emmanuel College, Cambridge

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Macfarlane, Robert}}

Category:Living people

Category:1976 births

Category:20th-century English male writers

Category:Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford

Category:Alumni of Pembroke College, Cambridge

Category:Boardman Tasker Prize winners

Category:British nature writers

Category:British travel writers

Category:English male non-fiction writers

Category:English non-fiction outdoors writers

Category:English people of Scottish descent

Category:Fellows of Emmanuel College, Cambridge

Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature

Category:People educated at Nottingham High School

Category:People from Newark and Sherwood (district)

Category:Philip Leverhulme Prize winners