Humans used to be embedded in the natural world, but today many of us live sedentary screen-based lives indoors, treating nature as something distant – to be watched on television or reached by flying elsewhere.

In Unwilded, Alastair Humphreys examines the consequences of this disconnection and how it shapes our wellbeing, childhood, education, diets, lifestyles and the liveability of towns. On a wider scale, it explains why the climate and ecological emergencies feel abstract and beyond our individual responsibility.

At the heart of the book is shifting baseline syndrome: from the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree to the extinction of possibly the most abundant bird species in history, it is the quiet process by which each generation accepts a depleted world as normal. 

Unwilded argues that change need not begin with grand gestures. It can begin with spending just fifteen minutes outdoors, paying attention. From nothing comes understanding, care and responsibility – and the beginning of rewilding ourselves and the world.



Alastair Humphreys is a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year and qualified teacher. He has cycled around the world, rowed the Atlantic Ocean and walked a lap of the M25 – one of his pioneering micro-adventures. These exploits have strongly informed his career as a prize-winning writer for both children and adults.

For children, he is the author of the bestselling The Boy Who Biked the World trilogy, a series of novels for 9–12-year-olds based on his own journey, and The Girl Who Rowed the Ocean, is a similarly novelised version of his transatlantic crossing. It was shortlisted for the Stanford's Children's Travel Book of the Year. His book Great Adventurers won that award as well as the Teach Primary Award for Non-Fiction.

For adults, he described his bicycle trips in Moods of Future Joys, Thunder and Sunshine and Ten Lessons from the Road. His book Local, about exploring close to home, was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize.

He received the Royal Geographical Society's Ness Award for his longstanding contribution to promoting a greater understanding of our world and encouraging public engagement with the outdoors.