Time and tide wait for no man, but author and Oxford professor Fiona Stafford is determined to capture them before they ebb away. Her new book, subtitled The Long, Long Life Of Landscape, sees her explore the length and breadth of the British Isles with the forensic eye of a scientist and the questioning soul of a poet.

Delving deep into woodlands and diving beneath waves, she seeks out the fascinating, rarely told stories which lay buried in our shared surroundings. A skilled raconteur, Stafford brings to life an array of tales as diverse and engaging as the mystical music of Fingal’s Cave, the horrors faced by survivors of the Spanish Armada shipwrecks, the complicated birth of spa towns and the plight of monkey puzzle trees. 

While the book loses some of its steam when it ventures inland to discuss drier topics such as incinerators and brickmaking, it’s the exploration of the natural world that makes this work sing. The chapters on migrating geese and the tragic loss of villages like Wales’s own Capel Celyn are hauntingly beautiful, and ensure Time And Tide leaves a far more permanent impression than its delicate – often all too transient – subject matter.