Robert Macfarlane

Hello—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…”

It is true!

Thanks, river-friends!

make that £2.2 billion and the water companies might take notice; anything less, it's just the cost of doing business (badly)

I’ve spent years, decades, obsessing over the Bush Administration’s Iraq WMD lies, writing about them, debunking them.

I can think of no lie about Iraq WMDs told by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al that comes even close to the enormity and absurdity of this lie from Donald Trump.

Thanks!

Ah — thanks, EFL!

Yes! Been following this one: a terrific outcome

Dirty water, death and decline: the inside story of a privatisation scandal There is no end in sight to the pollution caused by a ‘broken’ system. Experts say it could even be getting worse

“Prof Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to clean water, has singled out the English system for criticism, saying water should be managed as a publicly owned service, rather than run by private companies set up to benefit shareholders.”
www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

Hello — 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.

Hannah Spencer: the Green MP speaking to everyday people’s frustrations Winner of Gorton and Denton byelection was driven into politics by growing gap between super-rich and the ‘rest of us’

The small, brave band of MPs who represent the trampled, not the tramplers, has a very welcome new member.

We should all ask ourselves why, in a supposed democracy, such representatives are so rare.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Thanks Bob! It truly is. And, yes, a Cold War text of a kind, unmistakably to me.

Heck of a list to join 🫡

Here's a first look at official UK poster for UNDERLAND.

Directed by Rob Petit and based on the bestselling book by @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social, #UnderlandFilm is a cinematic voyage beneath the surface of the earth.

In UK/IRE cinemas from 27 March.
www.underlandfilm.com

@hannahpeel.bsky.social

Farwell Canyon The Chilcotin River in present-day British Columbia has long divided — and joined — the Secwépemc and Tsilhqot’in nations, each with an ancient claim to the land and the cherished salmon run there.

“This is my praise song for Farwell Canyon—that glorious Coyote-blessed and bewitched cathedral of salmon—for my enemy who is also my relative, and for the fish we love and share.”

Unmissable Julian Brave Noisecat essay on rivers, memories & imagining otherwise.

placesjournal.org/article/farw...

“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)…

Lovely to hear that Is A River Alive? landed with you, Caroline

Ah, thanks so so much Bob! We finished the tour tonight here in Cambridge, and a wild strange celestial thing came powerfully into being. The @brittensinfonia.bsky.social are beyond brilliant: magician-musicians. Weaving a 21st-c Planets with them, Delia and Will was…a joy beyond easy expression.

Very happy to share that shelf with you, Ferris!

Hello — your words made me very happy. Thank you. I am so glad the many differently deep times of this book resonated with you, as a climber and maker and world-lover and protestor.

I have just read your response to IARA?, probably only the second or third review of the book I’ve read. Thank you; it is heartfelt, wise, generous and precise. No writer could wish for more as a mode of engagement.

Just overjoyed about this. Old friends meeting new friends weaving with deep time and birdsong. Thank you.

We’re pleased to announce that we will be digitally releasing @hannahpeel.bsky.social's score to the film adaptation of @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social’s bestselling UNDERLAND on our Rivertones label on 27th March — the same day the film hits cinemas.

More info: www.caughtbytheriver.net/2026/01/unde...

Joyce — thank you

To say I enjoyed it might be an understatement.
Thank you for this masterpiece @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social
I picked it up while traveling and the threads of it were woven with uncanny accuracy through my adventures of the past few months. It was everything I needed.

Bless you, my friend. That’s lovely note to find here about a book I hold dear. Re-reading is a strange and rich and under-estimated/under-analysed experience, in my view.

Terrific. And say hi to that grand silver birch at the bottom of your garden from me.

Two days ago it was Elissa Slotkin. Last week it was Jerome Powell. Before that, Mark Kelly. Weaponizing the justice system against your opponents is an authoritarian tactic.

The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her.

Me too, Shalini

I’m touched and very glad to hear that, Ian.