The North Road by Rob Cowen

Rob Cowen is coming to Topping & Company Booksellers on Wednesday 23 September to talk about his new book, The North Road. It's an author talk, so he'll be there in person to discuss the work and answer questions.

The North Road follows the A1, the Great North Road, a 400-mile trackway that's run through Britain for the last 2,000 years. James Rebanks described it as 'a wonderful, epic braiding of history, geography and personal memoir', and it's already picked up some attention: it was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2025 and named a Radio 4 Book of the Week.

Cowen is an award-winning nature writer, and one of the UK's most original voices on nature, place and people. His first book, Skimming Stones, won the Roger Deakin Award from the Society of Authors. His second, Common Ground, was shortlisted for the Portico, Richard Jefferies Society and Wainwright Prizes, and was voted one of the nation's favourite nature books of all time in a BBC poll. The Heeding was the best-selling debut poetry book of 2021. Outside of his books, he's written for the New York Times, the Guardian and the Independent, and has written radio programmes for the BBC.

The talk is at Topping & Company Booksellers, 1 Museum Street, York YO1 7DT, on Wednesday 23 September. It starts at 7pm, with doors open from 6.30pm.