罗伯特·麦克法伦（Robert Macfarlane）出生于1976年，是剑桥的院士，他的研究和写作领域侧重于自然与文学的关系、二战之后的英美小说、当代诗歌和维多利亚时期文学等等。他的“行走文学三部曲”展现了当代旅行写作新的走向和所能达到的高度。其中首部《心事如山》获得了“卫报首作奖”、“泰晤士报年度最佳青年作家奖”和“萨默赛特·毛姆奖”；第二部作品《荒野之境》获得或被提名有将近十个奖项，由BBC制成纪录片。《古道》2012年出版，广受好评，不断出现在各种“年度好书”的推介中，获得“塞缪尔·约翰逊奖”提名。2013年他受邀担任布克奖评委会主席。麦克法伦的散文机智博雅，精巧而不晦涩，《格兰塔》前主编弗里曼称他为当代最好的行走文学作家。

The "Old Ways" is the stunning new book by acclaimed nature writer Robert Macfarlane Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize 2012. In "The Old Ways" Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove-roads and sea paths that form part of a vast network of routes criss-crossing the British landscape and its waters, and connecting them to the continents beyond. The result is an immersive, enthralling exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt old paths, of the stories our tracks keep and tell, of pilgrimage and ritual, and of songlines and their singers. Above all this is a book about people and place: about walking as a reconnoitre inwards, and the subtle ways in which we are shaped by the landscapes through which we move. Told in Macfarlane's distinctive and celebrated voice, the book folds together natural history, cartography, geology, archaeology and literature. His tracks take him from the chalk downs of England to the bird-islands of the Scottish northwest, and from the disputed territories of Palestine to the sacred landscapes of Spain and the Himalayas. Along the way he walks stride for stride with a 5000-year-old man near Liverpool, follows the 'deadliest path in Britain', sails an open boat out into the Atlantic at night, and crosses paths with walkers of many kinds - wanderers, wayfarers, pilgrims, guides, shamans, poets, trespassers and devouts. He discovers that paths offer not just means of traversing space, but also of feeling, knowing and thinking. The old ways lead us unexpectedly to the new, and the voyage out is always a voyage inwards. "Really do love it. He has a rare physical intelligence and affords total immersion in place, elements and the passage of time: wonderful". (Antony Gormley). "A marvellous marriage of scholarship, imagination and evocation of place. I always feel exhilarated after reading Macfarlane". (Penelope Lively). "Macfarlane immerses himself in regions we may have thought familiar, resurrecting them newly potent and sometimes beautifully strange. In a moving achievement, he returns our heritage to us". (Colin Thubron). "Every Robert MacFarlane book offers beautiful writing, bold journeys...With its global reach and mysterious Sebaldian structure, this is MacFarlane's most important book yet". (David Rothenberg, author of "Survival of the Beautiful" and "Thousand Mile Song"). "Luminous, possessing a seemingly paradoxical combination of the dream-like and the hyper-vigilant, "The Old Ways" is, as with all of Macfarlane's work, a magnificent read. Each sentence can carry astonishing discovery". (Rick Bass, US novelist and nature writer). "The "Old Ways" confirms Robert Macfarlane's reputation as one of the most eloquent and observant of contemporary writers about nature". ("Scotland on Sunday"). "Sublime writing ...sets the imagination tingling...Macfarlane's way of writing [is] free, exploratory, rambling and haphazard but resourceful, individual, following his own whims, and laying an irresistible trail for readers to follow". ("Sunday Times"). "Macfarlane relishes wild, as well as old, places. He writes about both beautifully...I love to read Macfarlane". (John Sutherland, "Financial Times"). "Read this and it will be impossible to take an unremarkable walk again". ("Metro"). Robert Macfarlane won the "Guardian" First Book Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the "Sunday Times" Young Writer of the Year Award for his first book, "Mountains of the Mind" (2003). His second, "The Wild Places" (2007), was similarly celebrated, winning three prizes and being shortlisted for six more. Both books were adapted for television by the BBC. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.