I’ve read George Monbiot before, both in book form and in newspaper columns, so what I expected before I started the book and what I got were surprisingly different.

It’s a very human and personal story leading to the much larger idea and movement based around the concept of allowing tracts of the countryside around the world to rewild themselves or be rewilded with bison, bears and wolves amongst other species (there are very good reasons for this, far too longform for a short review) and the oceans too.

I ended up slightly depressed actually at how little time I spend interacting with “nature” of any kind and my almost complete lack of knowledge of anything that happens there. He fishes from a kayak off the coast of Wales, spends time living with people in the Masai, walks the hills of Scotland, all beautifully evocative and thought provoking in the end.

Look, I know I’m not doing a proper sell on this – it’s a vast, sweeping book about the very nature (no pun intended) of what the planet will look like for generations to come and about how sometimes, (again no pun intended) we can’t see the wood for the trees.

A head-turner of a book. I’ll never look at the countryside in the same way again.