Wyld of the Woodling by William Rowlandson
PRE-ORDER: OUT 20.7.2026
Wyld of the Woodling is a weird and wayward wander across the landscape of East Kent, exploring the meaning of wildness, wilderness, wilding and rewilding, the ancient tension between civilisation and the wild, land disputes, woodland lore, tree consciousness, the ethics of mulch, and the strange, often contradictory ways we think about our place on this pale blue dot.
Taking its name from Russell Hoban’s 1980 novel Riddley Walker, whose hero wanders the same landscape in the post-apocalyptic future, the book follows William as he traverses Riddley’s route through the downs and towns, from city to coast, over three days. This is Day One. Part pilgrimage, part literary ramble, Wyld of the Woodling is an eccentric journey through a landscape layered with myth, history, and a future that already feels strangely familiar. Lyrical, mesmeric, and thought-provoking, this is a slow book for a hurried world.
Paperback | 172pp | 2026 | ISBN: 9781068422348
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William Rowlandson is a walker and talker of riddles, beguiled by the wild. A mycelial network. A rhizome with no beginning and no end, no centre and no boundary. A vortex of vapours. A distribution of dust. A gravitational pull towards a name, body, family, house, possessions, allotment (tangled), job at the university (tangled), friends, neighbourhood and community at the edges of the city of Canterbury. A scholar of Humanities, languages his trade, books his furniture, words his craft, stories his method, and stories, always, the goal.
