British-bred books about nature – once a series of laments for lost landscapes of the 18th century – are changing to meet the twin challenges of consumerism and climate change. Robert Macfarlane immersed himself in the Rights of Nature movement, which aims to defend the defenceless (our wildernesses, forests and animal cohabitants) against destruction, in his wonderful Is a River Alive? (2025). In Adam Weymouth’s first book, Kings of the Yukon (2018), the author championed the right of Chinook salmon to continue their 2,000-mile voyage up the Yukon to spawn in their natal waters. (The Chinook, or ‘King’ salmon, forms a staple of the diet of Alaska’s indigenous population, but climate warming has made it almost impossible to fish for them responsibly.)

In Kings of the Yukon, Weymouth and his girlfriend talked to Alaska’s riverside communities and individuals about the impact of climate change on their diet. (Do modern indigenous Yukonites want a salmon-heavy diet? Not necessarily, as they discovered.) Now, in the compelling Lone Wolf, Weymouth strikes out on his own, walking in the narrow pawprints of Slavc (pronounced Shloughts), the wolf that famously left Slovenia in 2011 and, four months and 1,000 miles later, descended from a hair-raising solitary journey across the Alps and the Dolomites to find a mate (swiftly nicknamed ‘Juliet’ by the press) close to Verona. 

How did Weymouth follow the wolf’s route? Slavc was trapped by scientific researchers, aged fifteen months – a teenager in wolf terms. Slavc was careless or just unlucky: trapping is no easy matter, as Weymouth explains. A wolf is sensitive enough to pick up a human’s scent even after two days