Robert Macfarlane Interviewed by John Greeves
A book born of a place In 2012, I was able to interview Robert Macfarlane about his encounters with these ancient sunken pathways, many of which have become hidden or mislaid like this recently uncovered interview.
Robert Macfarlane, is a well-known British travel writer and naturalist. He is best known for his books on landscape, nature, place, people and language, which include: The Mountain of the Mind (2003), The Old Ways (2012), Landmarks (2015), The Lost Words (2017) and Underland (2019). His books have received including the Guardian His first book was award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. In later times he has won numerous awards including The Wainwright Prize 2019, The Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award (2020) as well as being shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2020.
The word ‘holloway’ is not to be found in the OED, the word comes from the Anglo Saxon hol weg and refers to a hollow way, a sunken path. A route that centuries of footfall, hoof hit, wheel-roll and rain-run have harrowed deep down into bedrock. These paths lie below the level of the fields through there constant passage of human and animal traffic. ‘They are landmarks that speak of habit,’ as Macfarlane puts it, some being 20 ft deep and more like ravines than lanes, overgrown by the adjacent trees, so they appear as green roofed tunnels, enclosed in a timelessness.
Holloway (2012) is perhaps one of his lesser of Robert Macfarlane lesser known books and was co-authored with Dan Richards and illustrated by Stanley Donwood, (the renowned artist of the Radiohead record covers). It's a slender book, beautifully crafted and illustrated with a text which captures the escapades of Robert Macfarlane and his two companions who explored ancient holloways in South Devon.
This short book records two visits to the hills of Chideock in Dorset, a land bookended by Hardy’s Wessex and John Fowles at Lyme Regis. In the first trip Robert Macfarlane and the late Roger Deakin, author of Waterlog, go in search of the ‘holloway’ mentioned in the classic thriller Rogue Male. The book by Geoffrey Household recounts a tale of the hero who takes refuge in a deep holloway. Later, Robert wrote about it in The Wild Places and Roger Deakin in his Notes from Walnut Tree Farm. Sadly Roger died the summer after the trip.
The word ‘holloway’ is not to be found in the OED, the word comes from the Anglo Saxon hol weg and refers to a hollow way, a sunken path. A route that centuries of footfall, hoof hit, wheel-roll and rain-run have harrowed deep down into bedrock. -7-
