Flint

‘A very British love-letter to the beauty of flint’ Daily Telegraph Joanne Bourne has been in awe of flint as long as she can remember. It was all around her where she grew up in Kent: used for garden walls, to edge drives and weight dustbin lids, as well as to build pubs, churches, Roman villas and castles. For centuries it was the only building stone available. It is also magical. Made from the remains of plankton and sea sponges, it is second only in hardness to a diamond and can be used to make fire. Part of human development for three million years, it was used as a weapon to hunt and in war, and hung as protection against thunderbolts and fairies. In a deeply personal love letter to this extraordinary ‘biogenic’ rock, Bourne traces its geological, architectural and social history and invites us to roam with her in search of it on her beloved North Downs. Fusing science, poetry, history and a profound love of landscape, this is her heartfelt, thoroughly persuasive tribute to the stone she calls ‘an art project of the great divine’.

About the Author :
Joanne Bourne is a writer, photographer and archaeologist, born and raised on the North Downs of Kent, where she still lives. She has combined a career in publishing with archaeological fieldwork, excavating Neolithic and multi-period sites in Dalmatia, Libya and Orkney, where she has spent nine summers with the Ness of Brodgar team. Her great love is the chalk downland of her native Kent and, when she can, she spends her free time walking and photographing the seasons of its nature and wildlife. Her book Jake’s Bones, written with the young bone collector Jake McGowan Lowe, was shortlisted for the Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize. She is also the author of The Maps Book, published by Lonely Planet Kids in 2023, which was shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Children’s Travel Book of the Year. She is a member of the Folklore Society, the Lithic Studies Society and the Geologists’ Association.

Review :
‘If you like walking through the English countryside and the deep history of these isles, you will adore this vivid, personal, upbeat book about the hundred varieties of flint gleaming just under our feet. It’s an archaeologist’s love letter to a landscape trampled by prehistoric elephants, bears, boars, Romans, Saxons, Romanies and modern picnickers. Joanne Bourne makes the reader feel her happiness as she spots in a wood or on a chalk beach yet another shape or colour of the ancient stone that obsesses her, or as a Red Admiral butterfly curls its tongue for the salt on her arm’ ‘Fascinating, evocative and absorbing, Flint is an absolute joy. I savoured it to the last page’ ‘Flint is a beautifully written love letter to the history and mystique of a stone that has shaped human civilisation for millennia. Joanne Bourne’s enchanting narrative and personal anecdotes bring to life the magic and enduring significance of flint in a way that is both educational and deeply heartfelt’ ‘Joanne Bourne writes beautifully and convincingly. I liked it very much and learned a lot’ ‘An absolute gem of a book, that delights from the very first page. I have never thought about flint at all but now I am devouring this gorgeously written mine of history, geology and nature writing and making up for lost time’ ‘A unique, well-informed and enjoyable read that puts a new slant on this wondrous material from prehistory to the modern day’ ‘Publishing once gave us a well-regarded history of the pencil. There has been a good book devoted to the tulip. Even the colour mauve has been given its own tome. This quirky, enchanting ramble around the flintscapes of south-east England belongs in the same niche, where authors tell you about a single thing that turns out to contain multitudes, telling the nigh-mystical story of a stone that has, with quiet majesty, borne witness to all human history’ ‘Bourne interweaves the factual and fanciful, prehistory, culture, folklore and a profound love of nature, in this paean to Earth’s second-hardest substance. Lyrical, wise, whimsical, sparky as the ancient fire-starter itself, and at moments hilarious. The last line made me cry’ ‘A hymn to just one rock type in many of its forms, this is the most readable book, new or old, on the earth sciences that I have met in 2024. Unusual, entertaining and informative, I shall keep Flint on the shelf so that I can read it again when I need to be uplifted and inspired. I give it my highest recommendation’ ‘Describing herself as a flint obsessive, Bourne uses her personal journey to frame a larger narrative about humanity’s long relationship with this material’ ‘Joanne Bourne's love of her subject is infectious. You wander the fields with her and, like her, start to observe what is often unconsidered’ ‘Shares the wonder she feels and the deep, old stories hidden in the flint landscape’