The Last Wilderness - Neil Ansell

Neil Ansell's The Last Wilderness is a mesmerising book on nature and solitude by a writer who has spent his lifetime taking solitary ventures into the wild; a perfect read for anyone who has enjoyed Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways or William Atkins The Moor. 

The experience of being in nature alone is here set within the context of a series of walks that Neil Ansell takes into the most remote parts of Britain, the rough bounds in the Scottish Highlands. He illustrates the impact of being alone as part of nature, rather than outside it.

As a counterpoint, Neil Ansell also writes of the changes in the landscape, and how his hearing loss affects his relationship with nature as the calls of the birds he knows so well become silent to him.

For any readers drawn into the author's previous book, Deep Country - a mesmeric, beautifully written account of the author's five years of isolated living on a remote Welsh hillside - this will be a welcome return. Readers coming newly to his work, will find an author whose words resonate with a unique understanding of the natural world and how human lives can be shaped and changed by it.