{"id":3960,"date":"2026-03-24T09:15:41","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T09:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/?p=3960"},"modified":"2026-03-30T15:13:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:13:21","slug":"natures-ghosts-the-world-we-lost-and-how-to-bring-it-back-by-sophie-yeo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/2026\/03\/24\/natures-ghosts-the-world-we-lost-and-how-to-bring-it-back-by-sophie-yeo\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Nature\u2019s Ghosts: The World We Lost and How to Bring it Back’ by Sophie Yeo"},"content":{"rendered":"

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HarperNorth (2025)<\/p>\n

ISBN \u200f 978-0008474157<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Chris Holmes<\/em><\/p>\n

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In this beautifully constructed book, Sophie Yeo explores how the actions of humanity have shaped the natural world and looks at what we can do to bring back something of Earth\u2019s past abundance. The book ranges widely, with examples of humanity\u2019s interaction with Nature \u00a0from \u00a0many parts of the world including\u00a0 Australia, central France, Finland, Scotland, Transylvania, Wales and the USA. These illustrations of human behaviour make for fascinating and often disturbing reading, but the book also ranges widely over the historical and \u2018deep time\u2019 dimensions. I found particularly interesting the consideration of the \u2018Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum\u2019 (PETM) which began around 56 million years ago and which saw a rapid, intense global warming \u00a0lasting around 200,000 years \u2013 which may be what we will be repeating in some form!<\/p>\n

Despite the worst efforts of humanity over the centuries (and indeed millennia) there may be some grounds for hope, for as Sophie suggests \u2018ecosystems are easy to destroy but difficult to obliterate in their entirety\u2019. Using the resurrection of life in restored ancient ponds in Norfolk as an example, \u2018that these ecosystems can rise from the dead, irrespective of the sins heaped upon them, seems nothing short of a miracle\u2019.<\/p>\n

In nine chapters and an epilogue (along with over thirty pages of source notes) Nature\u2019s Ghosts blends stories and science with a profound emotional intelligence and a sense of nuance \u2013 even within all of the desecration that humanity has visited upon our planet.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of the book Sophie discusses sacred places and movingly talks about Kingley Vale in Sussex, a place I know well. She writes \u2018If we are ever to recover our sense of the sacred we need more wild places… to reconnect with them personally. To get to know their hidden layers.\u2019 I warmed to Sophie\u2019s discussion of spirituality \u2013 she is on a journey and makes it clear that it is by no means all worked out. In the epilogue, entitled\u00a0 \u2018Old Souls\u2019, Sophie writes about fear, and notes that in the distant past there were good reasons for being fearful of much in Nature, an interesting correction to some of the more simplistic views prevalent today. Here is the final paragraph in the book:<\/p>\n

\u2018I want my daughter to know pinewoods, meadows, winding rivers and frozen lakes. I want her to experience the wonder of an eagle upon a crag. To delight in a beaver building a dam. To feel the electricity of a kingfisher darting downstream. And fear, if she must feel it \u2013 let it not be of guns and cars, but of howls in the distance, of shadows in the forest, of eyes in the dark. Let her heart race. Let her feel alive\u2019.<\/p>\n

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  HarperNorth (2025) ISBN \u200f 978-0008474157 Reviewed by Chris Holmes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,11,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-gaia","category-nature-study","category-spirituality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3960"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3974,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3960\/revisions\/3974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenspirit.org.uk\/bookreviews2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}