The Lost Words

Sumptuous...a book combining meticulous wordcraft with exquisite illustrations deftly restores language describing the natural world to the children's lexicon... The Lost Words is a beautiful book and an important one * The Observer * One of the publishing sensations of recent times is The Lost Words * Daily Mail * My top book of the year... It is one of those children's books for ages up to 99 years. The lost words are those my generation and earlier ones used every day and which are fast disappearing, and Macfarlane's aim is to resurrect the everyday glories of our language. May he succeed * Susan Hill * Gilded and glorious, Jackie Morris's paintings illustrate Robert Macfarlane's acrostic poems in The Lost Words, one of the years loveliest books for all ages over 10 * The Sunday Times * Rapturously received celebration of nature * The New Statesman * Macfarlane is a changemaker... he has made nature-writing populis6t and big-selling. Morris's paintings are beautiful - at once familiar and other. A contender for book of the year * The Big Issue *

Robert Macfarlane (Author) Robert Macfarlane is the bestselling author of Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, The Old Ways, Landmarks, and Underland, and co-creator of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. Mountains of the Mind won the Guardian First Book Award and the Somerset Maugham Award and The Wild Places won the Boardman-Tasker Award. Both books have been adapted for television by the BBC. The Lost Words won the Books Are My Bag Beautiful Book Award and the Hay Festival Book of the Year. Robert Macfarlane is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and writes on environmentalism, literature and travel for publications including the Guardian, the Sunday Times and The New York Times. He is now working on his third book with long-time collaborator, Jackie Morris: The Book of Birds. Jackie Morris (Author) Jackie Morris is the bestselling and award-winning co-creator of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells, two books which have captured the hearts of hundreds of thousands of readers of all ages. She also illustrated and introduced a new edition of Barbara Newhall Follett's lost classic of wild literature, The House Without Windows. As an author, Jackie Morris has produced over forty beloved children's books; as an artist she has also worked with the New Statesman, Independent and Guardian, among others. She won the Kate Greenaway Medal and the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year for The Lost Words in 2018. Jackie lives in a cottage on the cliffs of Pembrokeshire, where she is now working on her forthcoming third book with long-time collaborator, Robert Macfarlane: The Book of Birds. Cerys Matthews (Reader) Song-loving cook or food-loving musician? Either way, Cerys Matthews has been experimenting with music and food ever since she can remember. From foraging and chewing on knotweed to cooking flapjacks and nettle soup as a young child, her interest in this planet's edibles has never waned. A life of touring guaranteed further culinary exploration: thousand-hole pancakes, amlou, roasted artichokes, vermouth with anchovy-filled green olives, death by chocolate, za'atar sprinkled on fresh tomatoes, hot baked soda bread, pineapple with chilli, crispy sage leaves and vegan haggis are just a few of the recipes Cerys shares in this book. Her festival,The Good Life Experience, celebrates outdoor cooking. Bill Granger, River Cottage's Gill Meller, Signe Johansen, Thomasina Miers , Anna Jones and Petershams Nursery's Damian Clisby are just some of the chefs invited each year to cook on flames and charcoal. Cerys is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Hook Line and Singer and children's books Tales from the Deep and Gelert. She is vice-president for both Shelter and the Hay Festival, and recipient of a St David Award for Culture and an MBE. Cerys cooks daily and lives in West London. Benjamin Zephaniah (Reader) Benjamin Zephaniah was born in Birmingham and then spent some of his early years in Jamaica. He came to London when he was 22 and his first book of poetry for adults was published soon after. He appears regularly on radio and TV including a Desert Island Discs appearance, literary festivals, and has also taken part in plays and films. He is most well-known for his performance poetry with a political edge for both children and adults and gritty teenage fiction. His collections Talking Turkey, Wicked World and Funky Chickens broke new ground in children's poetry. He is the only Rastafarian poet to be short-listed for the Chairs of Poetry for both Oxford and Cambridge University and has been listed in The Times' list of 50 greatest postwar writers. Benjamin now lives in East London.