Grace Crabtree works with Stir to Action, and is an artist, writer and filmmaker. Recent articles for STIR include a look at Virginia Woolf’s involvement with the Women’s Cooperative Guild, the emergence and legacy of the Fabian Society, and the Victorian polymath John Ruskin’s early intimations of anthropogenic climate change.
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Review: Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
Bringing the “inanimate brute matter” (in Isaac Newton’s phrase) ‘back to life’ may plunge us into unknown legislative and imaginative territory. But it feels like an essential reconceptualisation, to resurrect our rivers through old and new ideas, bubbling up through the cracks.
September 30, 2025