SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE

'The bothy embrace is addictive' ADAM NICOLSON

'Will have you reaching for your boots' CAL FLYN

The door to the bothy is always unlocked, you just need to step inside.

You will find them in the mountains. You will find them in the wilderness. A bothy is a remote hut you can't reserve, with no electricity, mod-cons or running water. And it's here you'll find Kat Hill - kettle on, feet up and pen out.

Leading us on a gorgeous and erudite journey around the UK, Kat reveals the history of these wild mountain shelters and the people who visit them. With a historian's insight and a rambler's imagination, she lends fresh consideration to the concepts of nature, wilderness and escape. All the while, Kat weaves together her story of heartbreak and new purpose with those of her fellow wanderers, past and present.

Writing with warmth, wit and infectious wanderlust, Kat moves from a hut in an active military training area in the far-north of Scotland to a fairy-tale cottage in Wales. Along her travels, she explores the conflict between our desire to preserve isolated beauty and the urge to share it with others - embodied by the humble bothy.

Bothy is a stirring, beautiful book for anyone who longs to run away to the wilds.

A New Memoir About Adventures in the Wilderness in Search of Simple Shelter, Longlisted for the Wainwright Prize 2024

About the Author

Kat Hill is an author & researcher based on the west coast of Scotland. She has a PhD from the University of Oxford (2011), where she was also a British Academy Postdoctoral Award holder. Kat has been the recipient of numerous grants from major academic funders, and she is the author of the prize-winning book, Baptism, Brotherhood, and Belief: Anabaptism and Lutheranism, 1525-1585 (Oxford University Press, 2015). Most recently she held an Environmental Humanities fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh and completed an MA in Environmental Humanities at Bath Spa. Kat lectured at Oxford, UEA and Birkbeck College for ten years before leaving academia and London for a life in Scotland to write, and she currently works as Community Engagement Coordinator for Highlands Rewilding. She is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt and a European champion.

Reviews

EARLY PRAISE FOR BOTHY

'The result is a thoughtful and thought-provoking, a beguiling combination of travel writing, nature writing, social history and personal reflection'

Daily Mail

'Kat Hill thoughtfully couples history with memoir; these personal touches endear the reader to a life of bothy-dwelling. This is a warm, erudite work that neatly explores our relationship with wild landscapes and carefully considers our place within them'

New Stateman

'An intelligent and thoughtful book that will have you reaching for your boots. Hill offers learned and considered reflections on the consolations of retreat, simple living, of finding even temporary shelter when all outside is tempest. It is also a meditation on change: climate change, emotional growth, and the unquenchable nostalgia for a past slipping ever further from view'

Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment

'Marvellous... It would be difficult to think of a subtler or more careful exploration of the wrinkles of modern life and modern nature, with all its traps, delights, delusions and possibilities.

Adam Nicolson, author of Life Between the Tides

'A questing, atmospheric collection of meditations of the essential nature of bothy life. A book steeped in dubbin, wood smoke, lanolin, and love of wild places, Kat Hill's hymn to the humble highland hut will delight and inform armchair travellers, weekend walkers, and veteran rough-stuffers alike'

Dan Richards, co-author of Holloway

'You can't imagine just how much I loved the book... the universality underneath the particularity is going to strike a chord with so many readers'

Sophie Howarth, author of Looking at Trees and co-founder of The School of Life

Book Information
ISBN 9780008619022
Author Kat Hill
Format Hardback
Page Count 400
Imprint William Collins
Publisher HarperCollins Publishers
Weight(grams) 480g
Dimensions(mm) 222mm * 141mm * 40mm