'Holloway' by Robert Macfarlane, Stanley Donwood and Dan Richards

In Dorset, as in some other soft-rocked areas of Britain, there are ancient paths that have been worn by centuries of feet, hoofs and wheels into long clefts, sometimes metres deep, in the surrounding countryside, and now, in an age of rapid travel, much unused and overhung with concealing trees and other vegetation. This book tells of two exploratory journeys through one such hollow way: the first in 2005 by Macfarlane (The Old Ways, The Wild Places, Mountains of the Mind) and his friend Roger Deakin before Deakin’s untimely death the following year; and the second in 2011 by Macfarlane retracing this journey with two friends, artist Stanley Donwood and writer Dan Richards. It is interesting to compare the two times of Macfarlane’s accounts (“stretches of path carry memories of a person just as a person might of a path”), and Macfarlane’s account of the second visit with Richards’. The writing by both is exquisite: everywhere there is a quietness, a weightedness, an enclosedness, and a sense of time overlaid and overlaid until these layers are worn thin and lose distinction. Donwood’s dark, tangled illustrations perfectly match the prose and complete this beautifully produced little book.

(September 2013)