The Living Mountain cover art

The Living Mountain

A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland

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The Living Mountain

Written by: Nan Shepherd, Robert Macfarlane, Jeanette Winterson
Narrated by: Tilda Swinton, Robert MacFarlane, Jeanette Winterson
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About this listen

In this masterpiece of nature writing, beautifully narrated by Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape.

Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the ‘essential nature’ of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains, and on our imaginative relationship with the wild world around us. Composed during the Second World War, the manuscript of The Living Mountain lay untouched for more than 30 years before it was finally published.

©2019 Nan Shepherd (P)2019 Canongate Books Ltd Anthologies & Short Stories Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Science Short Stories

Critic Reviews

"The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain." (Guardian)

"Reading [The Living Mountain] seems to me to explain why reading is so important. And odd. And necessary. And not like anything else. There is no substitute for reading." (Jeanette Winterson)

"Most works of mountain literature are written by men, and most of them focus on the goal of the summit. Nan Shepherd's aimless, sensual exploration of the Cairngorms is bracingly different." (Robert MacFarlane)
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What a gem of a book, beautiful, precise, spare, and yet overflowing with love for the Cairngorms. Really resonated with a mountain girl like me, even though my beloved mountains are the Himalayas. Tilda Swinton has been the perfect narrator, steering clear of exaggerated elocution and keeping it simple, so that Nan Shepherd's lovely prose shines through. So much so, that halfway thru I went and bought a hard copy, which I will now (re) read and make notes in. Thanks to Rob MacFarlane for the sweetest afterword. The Jeannette Winterson bit I quickly skipped; I cannot fathom why it's been included here, it's just not in the same plane of writing as Shepherd and MacFarlane.

Thrilling read.

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