Landmarks is a bigger book than it first appears. There is a manifesto quality to it, a more urgent beat than in his previous work. We have lost touch with the earth, Macfarlane argues, both physically and linguistically. By presenting writers who were engaged with it, and language that belongs to an age when children could tell the difference between an oak and an ash, a sparrow and a wren, the book demands our re-engagement with the natural world. The result is a step forward for Macfarlane and for nature writing. In response to a threatened, damaged landscape, a distinctive art form is in flower, of which Helen Macdonald’s prize-winning H Is for Hawk is the latest in a long and lively line. As happened in the Romantic period, the last time readers and writers combined to hymn and study the powers of a vulnerable British landscape, our era is producing work of lasting worth. Landmarks both makes the threat to our children’s experience and sensibility explicit, and offers solutions.