Winter Words Festival 2023

Friday 10 February

3.30-4.30pm

Alastair McIntosh is a writer and thinker who explores our times through the lenses of history, politics, psychology and religion. He is also a frequent BBC broadcaster and an honorary professor at the University of Glasgow. This event launches the new edition of Poacher’s Pilgrimage opening up the Faerie Hill to new audiences. The book is both a meditation and a walk through one of the most difficult, beautiful and remote landscapes in Europe – the West Side of Lewis and Harris.

In its foreword, Alastair calls it his most beautiful book, and Madeleine Bunting, formerly of The Guardian, reviewed it as, ‘as much a journey into an unusual mind as it is about the Island

The John Muir Trust’s journal said, ‘more than a nature book, he considers how religion, faeries and geology have shaped our history, politics, science, spirituality and imagination.

Alastair McIntosh’s books  include Soil and Soul on land reform, Riders on the Storm on climate change, and Poacher’s Pilgrimage on nature, war trauma and spirituality. His writing has been described as “solid on the science” by Prof Katharine Hayhoe, “punctuated by humour, laughter and a twinkle” by Polly Pullar, and “a map that leads the right way” by the late philosopher, Mary Midgley.