Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
The elusive lives of otters, badgers, weasels and more are rendered in John Lister-Kaye's enchanting lyrical style
A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023: NATURE AND TRAVEL
Footprints in the Woods is John Lister-Kaye's charming account of a year spent with otters, badgers, weasels and pine martens. This family - Mustelidae - all live in the wild at Aigas, the conservation and field study centre in the Highlands that he calls home.
With fifty years of experience living side-by-side with these creatures and the patience of a true naturalist, John reveals the lives of these elusive animals; sometimes red in tooth and claw, but often playful, familial, curious and surprising.
"John Lister-Kaye's mesmerising new book reveals the true savagery of mustelids . . . bears both the unsentimentality of a lifelong naturalist and the eloquent punch of a superior thriller-writer"
"Spellbinding . . . Footprints In The Woods is a wonderfully beguiling read. Second to none, it does what all great nature writing should do: it makes you want to get out there yourself"
"This book conjures otters, badgers, pine martens and weasels right onto the page, in language that is deft, vivid and alive"
— JAY GRIFFITHS
"Lister-Kaye is the real thing: a peerless observer who is just as much part of the land as his beloved badgers . . . Marvellous"
— CHARLES FOSTER
"Sir John Lister-Kaye, a leading naturalist and conservationist, has a fine eye for detail and a poetic turn of phrase. [ . . . ] Mesmerising"
"A love letter to the otters, badgers, weasels and pine martens . . . and a reminder of the fragility of habitat and the beauty and variety we have to lose if we don't choose to actively protect it"
"Praise for John Lister Kaye: Utterly charming and captivating"
"If only we could all be as attentive to the life around us as John Lister-Kaye. No one writes as movingly, or with such transporting poetic skills, about encounters with wild creatures"
— HELEN MACDONALD, author of H IS FOR HAWK
"Scotland's high priest of nature writing; it's charming and moving to wander along with him"
"With an untameable enthusiasm and generosity of spirit, Lister-Kaye translates [ . . . ] into a kind of inter-species friendship"
— JAY GRIFFITHS, author of WILD: AN ELEMENTAL JOURNEY
"John Lister-Kaye is one of the most joyful, inspirational naturalists I know"
— KATE HUMBLE
"A great naturalist"
— CHRIS PACKHAM
"Renowned conservationist John Lister-Kaye finds as much drama in the creatures of his garden in the Highlands as watching polar bears cross frozen ice packs near the North Pole . . . He has fallen in love with these moments of everyday adventure"
"I am addicted to the writings of John Lister-Kaye"
— JOANNA LUMLEY
Sir John Lister-Kaye is one of Britain's best-known naturalists and conservationists. He is the author of eleven books on wildlife and the environment, including The Dun Cow Rib, shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize, and Gods of the Morning, winner of the Richard Jefferies Award for Nature Writing. John has lectured on the natural environment all over the world. He has served prominently in the RSPB, the Nature Conservancy Council, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Wildlife Trust. In 2003 he was awarded an OBE for services to nature conservation and in 2016 he was awarded the Royal Scottish Geographical Society's Geddes Environment Medal. He lives with his wife and family among the mountains of the Scottish Highlands, where he runs the world-famous Aigas Field Centre.
lister-kaye.co.uk | aigas.co.uk