The Beijing National Stadium (The Bird’s Nest)
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘It’s at night that you really notice the dust, because artificial light suddenly makes the fines visible.’
The Beijing National Stadium (The Bird’s Nest)
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘Feelings can be very obscure but numbers never lie.’
Kevin Brazil on metrics, obsession and fitness.
‘An intense workout is an ecstasy of punishment packaged as self-improvement.’
Mary Wellesley on exercise, ritual and Barry’s Bootcamp.
‘I was not good at sports because I would not do sports because I did not have the body for sports because I would not do sports.’
Saba Sams on girlhood, embodiment and avoiding sports.
‘Following United rarely brings me any great joy and most often it depresses me. If I could disengage, I would.’
Jonny Thakkar on Manchester United.
‘I deployed my body against an opponent like a blunt and effective instrument.’
John Patrick McHugh on playing Gaelic football.
Robert Macfarlane was born in Nottinghamshire in 1976. He is the author of Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, The Old Ways and Landmarks. Mountains of the Mind won the Guardian First Book Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. The Wild Places won the Boardman-Tasker Award and the Sundial Scottish Arts Council Non-fiction Award. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and writes on environmentalism, literature and travel for publications including the Guardian, the Sunday Times and The New York Times.
More about the author →
‘Travelling into the Ness for the first time was exactly like Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker’
Robert Macfarlane in conversation with Adam Scovell.
‘This is the Broomway, allegedly ‘the deadliest’ path in Britain and certainly the unearthliest path I have ever walked.’
‘On a cold morning last January, I travelled out to the Norfolk Fens to see a ghost.’
‘The best writers rose to the challenge by seeking not originality of destination, but originality of form.’
‘Entering a wood is to enter an element as different as the sea.’
‘To make sure she was looking her best in the photos, Wu Jiayu avoided eating during our dates, and she didn’t order anything for me when we were done.’
A short story by Wang Zhanhei, translated by Dave Haysom.
Granta magazine is run by the Granta Trust (charity number 1184638)
The copyright to all contents of this site is held either by Granta or by the individual authors, and none of the material may be used elsewhere without written permission. For reprint enquiries, contact us.