The Old Straight Track

Watkins re-enchanted the English landscape, investing it with fresh depth and detail, prompting new ways of looking and new reasons to walk – Robert MacfarlaneA remarkable book… Alfred Watkins [was a] visionary who saw beyond the bounds of his time’ – John MichellRobert Macfarlane in his introduction to this new edition […] is respectful, finding new relevance in Watkin’s writing. The result is to fold Watkins, the counter-cultural mystic-modernist, into the cultural landscape, laying the track for others to follow * TLS *A stimulating historical mediation on landscape * Daily Mail *Careful erudite topography in the grand Enlightenment tradition, which nevertheless presents a vision of Herefordshire that is awe-inspired * Spectator *

Alfred Watkins was an amateur archaeologist, who was born in 1855 in Herefordshire, where he lived his entire life. In 1921, he developed his theory of ley-lines in the landscape. Watkins was a member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, an authority on bee-keeping and a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. He died in 1935.

Robert Macfarlane is the prize-winning author of The Wild Places (2007) and The Old Roads (2011), Landmarks (2015) and Underland (2019). His writing has been widely adapted for television and radio. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.