Answer

By Trail magazine

The £2,000 prize was scooped by Robert Macfarlane for his book ‘The Wild Places’, in which he goes in search of the elusive 21st century wilderness, and struggles to comprehend why it means so much to him. For a fuller insight into the book you might enjoy this interview Trail carried out with Robert when the book was published:

You've said before that in the past 75 years 50% of the hedgerows have gone, half the ancient woodlands, most of the wildflower meadows... So is your book celebration or elegy?
 
It's both of those things - they are not mutually exclusive - and also a warning. I wanted to write a joyful book, that caught some of the beauty and the glee of wild places. But I also wanted to write a book with an undertow of melancholy and loss (past and future). The book is filled with stories of people who have been separated from their beloved landscapes - through exile, imprisonment or illness. I didn't realise I was collecting all these self-similar stories until after I'd finished writing. Clearly they represent a preoccupation on my part with what we stand to lose when we lose landscape.

What do you hope your book will do?
 
I don't want to predict its outcomes. There is a word for books whose desired outcomes are predictable, and that word is propaganda. This is not a work of propaganda. It is an account of places I have been, things I have seen and done, and landscapes and people that have moved me. That's all. Its consequences are up to its readers.

Can you define 'wilderness' in one sentence?

No, but I will offer a definition of a wild place as somewhere that reminds us of worlds, forces and rhythms which exceed the human.