Robert Macfarlane’s new book, Is A River Alive? — which is focused on the idea that rivers, forests and mountains are living beings and have rights that should be recognised both in imagination and in law — has been hard to miss over the past few days. The Guardian had an extract on Saturday, and the Financial Times had a review from the writer and lawyer Philippe Sands, who said the book, calling for “a compellingly different way of thinking about nature”, was written with “crystalline clarity and force”. Macfarlane was also one of the guests on Monday on Start the Week on Radio 4.

And I see now that a Guardian review, by the author and poet Blake Morrison, went online on Monday. Macfarlane’s prose, he says, “aspires to poetry throughout”. His “impassioned book shows the way, ending on a riskily lyrical high with his arrival as a waterbody complete: ‘I am rivered.’”