Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 07/05/2026“First week of May — and ears are peeled each day for that bodkin-shriek and devil-cry, for the screaming that comes across the sky…” They’re back! The Swifts are back, and the world has turned once more... My first swifts of the year, thrillingly, spine-tinglingly, above Oxford. Seen them yet? 1215921
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 07/05/2026Hello—The Book of Birds by me & the artist Jackie Morris is published…today A re-imagining of the field guide/bird book for our age of wonder & loss, from Avocet to Yellowhammer. Jackie has painted over 300 original artworks for it; I’ve tried to let language soar, glide & plunge. For the birds! 1733783
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 26/04/2026On May 7th I & the artist Jackie Morris publish The Book of Birds, our love-letter to birds & our re-imagining of the humble, wonderful field guide/bird book form. Jackie’s painted more than 300 new pieces of art for the book; a jaw-dropping body of work. First set of events detailed below. Come! 1017937
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 11/04/2026hello—on Monday 20 April @curzon.com Soho is showing Lost For Words, a beautiful film about language, nature & hope based on The Lost Words by me & Jackie Morris. Jackie & I will both be there for a Q&A. Please let others know who might be interested—& come join us! www.curzon.com/films/lost-f... 17610
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 31/03/2026The spectacular film adaptation of my book Underland is in cinemas as of Friday. More details at: www.underlandfilm.com Working on more screenings in Scotland, Wales & NI. 1211320
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 22/03/2026The New School of the Anthropocene is an experimental micro-university, which offers an affordable, radical, alternative to mainstream higher ed. I teach there each year & we have students from Gaza, Ukraine & around the world. 2026 enrolment is now open. www.nsota.org @nsota.bsky.social 512345
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 19/03/2026Hey Ben — one for you in today’s issue of Private Eye. 010
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 07/03/2026Hello—here’s the official trailer for UNDERLAND, based on my book of the same name, dir. by Rob Petit, with a haunting, glittering score by @hannahpeel.bsky.social, & the ‘Storyteller’ voiced by Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest). Hope you like it. In UK/Irish cinemas 27 March. 616240
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 05/03/2026Hello—Is a River Alive? is published in paperback in the UK today. It’s dedicated to the rivers & their guardians. Thanks to all who’ve supported its journey into the world: read it, talked about it, got in touch. It’s @waterstones.bsky.social book of the month. “Hope is the thing with rivers…” 1022847
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 27/02/2026Hello — the film adaptation of my book Underland will be showing at the BFI IMAX on 1 April. It should be spectacular on the 26m-high screen there. Tickets go on sale at 4pm today (Friday) here via bfi.org.uk. I’ll be there for a Q&A with the director, Rob Petit, who’s created an extraordinary film. 412717
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 18/02/2026“it is well to hear, to become aware of, the operations of water among whose spider lacings by chance we live…” James Agee in 1941, superb on the life and liveliness of rivers. A river as a “huge, casual and aloof creature”. That trifecta of adjectives (not to mention the choice of noun)… 28415
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 26/06/2025Hello—I’m hanging up my boots here on BlueSky for the summer. Come find/follow me on Instagram instead, perhaps, where I’m @robgmacfarlane. 👇👇👇 10730
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 20/05/2025Hello—Is A River Alive? is published today in the US by @wwnorton.com. The beautiful jacket of living, writhing rivers is based on art by the great @stanleydonwood.bsky.social. I feel deeply committed to the rivers, people & ideas in this book—& can’t wait to come to North America with it next week. 1822128
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 11/05/2025Hello––Is A River Alive? is published in the US & Canada on 20 May. I am coming on tour––dates & locations below––& would love to speak of the book’s ideas, people & rivers to as many folk as possible while I'm out there. Please let anyone know who you think might want to come to an event. Cheers! 1612131
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 01/05/2025Is A River Alive? is published today, 1 May. It’s about the lives, deaths & rights of rivers—& how our fate flows with that of water & always has. To the people, places & rivers whose ideas run through its pages, thank you so much. I think it’s the book I’ve been learning to write all these years. 55626156
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 29/04/2025Hello—on Wed evening I’ll be at Ely Cathedral for the first event in a reading/speaking tour for Is A River Alive? Then around & about through May. Dates & places below in case you might make it. On the lives, loves, deaths & rights of rivers… Ely tickets here! www.toppingbooks.co.uk/events/ely/r... 59822
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 24/04/2025Hello—Is A River Alive? is out a week today, on 1 May. I went to Clays the printer to see how my books are made (many marvellous machines!) & to sign 3000 special editions. Here’s what happened in 40 seconds. Here are the indie bookshops who have the specials for pre-order: linktr.ee/Is_A_River_A... 2247962
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 17/04/2025This–– @robcowen.bsky.social’s The North Road––is out today. It's magnificent: one of the best books you'll read this year. A polyphonic walking-up of the ghosts & lives of the Great North Road; a bravura act of imagining in which RC seems to slip supernaturally between times & minds. So, so good. 1014112
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 16/04/2025Hello––my book Underland has been adapted into a feature film & the world premiere is at Tribeca in June. It's taken 4.5 years––& the team’s created something astonishing. A documentary that's groundbreaking in form, voice & tone. I hope you might see it one day. Full account on IG (@robgmacfarlane) 2545863
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 08/04/2025Hello—I’m trying to help heal a river: the wild, spectacular Mutehekau Shipu in Nitassinan/Quebec. We're raising funds to clean up a junk-heap we found c.100 miles up the system. Stove, fridge, oil drums...gah. Images of river + junk below. Details & fundraiser here: www.gofundme.com/f/mutehekau-... 011327
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 06/04/2025An Teallach horseshoe today. Nine glittering hours on 400-million-year-old sandstone. White-tailed eagle riding the thermals; ptarmigan on quartzite; raven gleaming silver. Blue ridgelines receding; next stop Newfoundland for the eye looking westwards. But June conditions in April; where is winter? 1446133
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 04/04/2025“Grief, like an apple tree, grows crooked not straight.” Each year I mark the day when this little apple tree first flowers, & remember my friend the writer Roger Deakin, who brought it back as a pip from Kazakhstan, then died soon after. Full story here: emergencemagazine.org/essay/east-t... 1840145
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 29/03/2025Recently taught this, one of Hopkins’ so-called “Terrible” or “Desolation” sonnets. An astonishing, shattering poem; the self splitting & re-splitting; self-invigilating, self-flagellating. A syntax of contortion & depression; words eliding, consuming—until, oh, that wild (“betweenpie”!) ending… 615929
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 29/03/2025Hello US readers––we've made a special limited edition hardback of my new book Is A River Alive? It’s only available to pre-order from 60 US indie bookstores & comes with a 48-page @fieldnotesbrand.bsky.social "river" notebook. Artwork by the great Stanley Donwood! Orderable here: isariveralive.com 1311128
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 27/03/2025Happy publication day to @danzep.bsky.social for this banger of a book. It's funny & moving & generously various in its voices –– a journey after dark in two senses. 17015
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 23/03/2025Spring at the King of Limbs: the tree that is a forest. 921920
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 21/03/2025Hello—in May I will be talking about & reading from Is A River Alive? Dates & places below. I actually can’t wait. Please come along! Summer & autumn dates to follow, including Scotland in August. 1310918
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 20/03/2025Hello—we’ve made a special limited first edition of Is A River Alive?, exclusive to UK independent bookshops. Signed by me, stamped w/ a Stanley Donwood ink-print, w/ “Riversong” by me & Nick Hayes & glowing LiDAR endpapers. Pre-orderable now from 80 indies. Might go fast. 👉 linktr.ee/robmacfarlane 2822441
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 13/03/2025The chiffchaffs are really kicking off at the moment, aren't they? Seesaw song-notes from seemingly every tree, including (yesterday evening) this magnolia. 62033
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 09/03/2025River-lovers: the Riverfly initiative is a brilliant way to help protect your local river. Get trained as a citizen-scientist: learn to monitor your local river via key inverts, report pollution, create data-sets: riverflies.org Get hands-on, get wet, make a difference! @paulpowlesland.bsky.social 918472
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 06/03/2025Young people, teachers, parents: Action for Conservation, where I'm a founding trustee, runs free Summer Camps to inspire 12-16 year olds to a lifelong love of nature & conservation. They’re really fun. Applications now open: www.actionforconservation.org/camp Pls help spread the word/RT! 410852
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 06/03/2025Today my dad & brother walked together, in fierce winds, to the Pools of Dee––high in the Lairig Ghru, the great glacier-carved glen that cuts the Cairngorms N-S. The Pools hold a special place in our family. Know them? Lucid water; a young river, forming. They filled a bottle for me up there. 22314
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 04/03/2025Finished recording the audiobook of Is A River Alive? today. Four days in the locker. A strenuous, fascinating experience: I have such admiration for those who are brilliant at this art. I met my own writing as a stranger—and had to become its storyteller. The ear hears what the eye does not see. 1421413
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 02/03/2025Silver winter light in the northern corries of the Cairngorms yesterday. And look at that fabulous expanse of pine forest lapping the feet of the big hills. Pulls my heart northwards… (Images by my parents, who were up in Coire an Lochan) 1044534
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 26/02/2025The New School of the Anthropocene is a radical, trans-disciplinary, low-fee experiment in higher ed. I'm proud to teach there & to think together with students from Gaza, Ukraine & beyond. Applications open for 25-26: virtual/in-person More on our ethos/apply here: nsota.org/home @nsota.bsky.social 113438
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 26/02/2025These deeply beautiful maps show the migration patterns of––respectively––Curlew, Kittiwake & Blackcap. From this interactive migration atlas recording migrations of 300 bird species: migrationatlas.org Birds both tether us to places & stitch the world together. 9538119
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 19/02/2025This is happening, right now. The great "arribada" (arrival) of mother Olive Ridley sea turtles on the Odisha coast, where they dig sand-nests & lay their eggs, driven by ancient instinct. Heart-lifting, magnificent, moving: part of a geography of hope. 🎞️ by Bivash Pandav via my friend Yuvan Aves. 493128523
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 05/02/2025Hello Cambridge folk—I’ll be joining Hayden Thorpe this Thursday night to perform Ness: Hayden’s extraordinary album, based on the book of the same name by me & @StanleyDonwood. Strange-ness, eeri-ness, joyful-ness. Join us! Details/tix here: www.storeysfieldcentre.org.uk/event/hayden... 17412
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 05/02/2025“We are more than the sum of our differences…” Stepping this evening into @moudhy.bsky.social’s tender, moving & vivid history of ancient Mesopotamia—& how it still speaks to us. As a lover of cuneiform & Gilgamesh obsessive, this is *so* my jam. The book itself is also a spectacular object! 1321729
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 05/02/20250.43% increase in UK GDP by 2050 if a third runway is opened at Heathrow. 12% fall in world GDP for every 1C rise in global temperature. 6386139
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 30/01/2025Rachel Reeves holds newts in contempt, it seems. So I thought I'd post this glorious painting of a "lion of the duckweed" by Jackie Morris + my paean to these "kings of the pond", both from The Lost Words. Newt-lovers, unite! 15479114
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 30/01/2025Find myself returning for the third time (the first post-Trump 2.0) to Nick Estes’ outstanding history of Standing Rock/#NoDAPL. On the assetisation of land & water; on resistance, community, solidarity. “The rallying cry of Mni Wiconi—‘water is life’—is also an affirmation that water is alive.” 08515
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 30/01/2025Intertidal, by Yuvan Aves, is an extraordinary book: a passionate study of the ancient conversation between sea & land; a work of meditation, activism, field-naturalism––& vast generosity. I love it so much I've written a foreword to the UK edition: pub. 6 Feb. Recommended with all my heart. 831641
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 06/01/2025The Eco Jurisprudence monitor is a fascinating & hopeful resource: an interactive database of Earth-centred legal initiatives (eg river-rights) as their number & consequences grow & grow. Cartography as imagining otherwise; a glimpse of a geography of hope. Here: ecojurisprudence.org/dashboard/?m... 211834
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 01/01/2025“Out of a clear sky you send broken heart emojis” Zaffar Kunial’s brilliant, confronting poem is scored into the scarred, scoured, “jagged blooded” heart of this ongoing moment. First written in May, but—as Israeli strikes kill 12 more in Gaza today, mostly women & children—it bears re-sharing. 411825
Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 31/12/2024“Now night passes and New Year draws near, drawing off darkness as our Deity decrees. But wild-looking weather was about in the world: clouds decanted their cold rain earthwards; the nithering north needled man’s very nature…” Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, late 14th-century, trans. Simon Armitage 830562