The Script of Stones follows a short walk along the dramatic clifftops of Gower, South Wales – a journey of barely half a mile that becomes an expansive meditation on nature, memory, and loss. Drawing on a lifetime’s intimacy with this landscape, Francis Gooding explores rockpools and limestone strata, traces the movements of choughs and adders, and examines everything from slugs to geological deep time.

In our age of environmental uncertainty, Gooding confronts how knowledge of climate change has destabilised our relationship with the natural world. Part elegy, part celebration, The Script of Stones weaves together family history and the wonder of the miniscule to paint a portrait of a world that exists before, during and after us – a world that will endure.