The Waterlands

By Stephen Rutt

From the award-winning author of The Seafarers and Wintering comes a fascinating exploration of the most miraculous substance on Earth: water.

It falls in a moment. When the heaviest droplets of ice can no longer be held, the first raindrop slips from the sky and plunges, down through the damp, cold air, thawing as it plummets. Splashing into the sodden hillside, rainfall merging with river source, it flows for the first time.

The Waterlands is a new story of water, revealing its natural rhythms and miraculous power. Follow a raindrop as it flows through diverse waterscapes: river sources in the upland moors; saltmarsh-flanked firths and estuaries; serene and spectacular lochs; crystal-clear chalk streams; blanket bogs that are both land and liquid, a thin skin of peat over millennia-old water.

On this epic journey, award-winning writer Stephen Rutt visits these places where life flourishes, revealing how water shapes the land, shapes our lives – and how we shape it in return. Beautifully blending geography, ecology, climate writing and social history, The Waterlands is a captivating retelling of the water cycle, and an urgent call to protect our most essential resource.

You’ll never see a raindrop the same way again.