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Alastair Humphreys’ Local, which we published in January 2024, has been longlisted for the Wainwright Prize, it was announced today.
Named after nature writer Alfred Wainwright, the prize is awarded annually for the best work of general outdoors, nature and UK-based travel writing. Local has been longlisted in the award’s nature-writing category.
Humphreys’ fourteenth book, Local is a beautifully illustrated account of his weekly exploration of the detailed Ordnance Survey map around his home.
As The Observer put it: ‘He’s been on adventures all over the world, but in Local, Humphreys limits himself to exploring the 20km around his suburban English home over a calendar year. In imposing that restriction, he discovers far more about the place in which he lives – and the way he approaches the world.
‘Thanks to some genuinely thoughtful writing about planet, place and political purpose, he finds beauty in the scruffy margins and makes readers look anew at what might easily be familiar or forgotten.’
The Financial Times called the book ‘a paean to the benefits of determined noticing’, adding: ’What really shines through its pages is Humphreys’ omnivorous curiosity.’
Alastair Humphreys is a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year. He has cycled around the world, rowed the Atlantic Ocean and walked a lap of the M25 – one of his pioneering microadventures.
His bestselling books include Great Adventurers, which won the Stanford’s Children’s Travel Book of the Year and the Teach Primary Award for Non-Fiction, and The Boy Who Biked the World trilogy. That series of novels for 9–12-year-olds was based on the real-life adventures he recounted in Moods of Future Joys, Thunder and Sunshine and Ten Lessons from the Road.
His more recent 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.
The winner of the Wainwright Prize will be announced in September.
