Thomas Halliday and ‘Otherlands - A World in the Making’ Thursday 21 September

Imagine you could walk back in time though 500 million years. What would you see, smell, hear and feel in the worlds before ours?

Watch the rhythm of pterosaurs in flight, smell the sulphurous boiling lakes, notice the iridescence of a beetle's shell scuttling across your path… in sixteen chapters in sixteen locations on earth, Halliday thrillingly walks us through the landscapes of our past, to the birthplace of humanity in Kenya and the flooding of the Mediterranean; to the making of Europe and the laying down of the root systems that have become our fossil fuels today;  showing us the worlds that survived, those that didn’t make it, and offering a new appreciation of the one that we are making now. Drawing on the latest science, Halliday’s encyclopaedic knowledge enriches this story of life on earth, told with all the drama of the best fiction or poetry.

Thomas is an Associate Research Fellow at the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Birmingham. He won the Hugh Miller Writing Competition in 2018.

 Sponsored by: The Fleece Hotel