Cornwall-Based Author’s Final Book in Trilogy Heads to Lamorna and Beyond

What lies beneath our feet has shaped how we live, what we believe and the stories we tell each other for thousands of years. That is the territory Cornwall-based author Wyl Menmuir steps into with his new book, The Spirit of Stone, out on 11th June 2026.

Published by Aurum Press in hardback at £16.99, the collection of essays completes a trilogy that began with The Draw of the Sea and continued with The Heart of the Woods. This final volume turns its attention to rock, stone and earth, and the ways these landscapes continue to define us.

A Cornish journey within a wider story

Cornwall features prominently across the book’s chapters. Readers will find Wyl walking the ritual landscape of West Penwith in a chapter called Star Watcher, exploring the ancient stone structures of the Lamorna Valley in Portal Dreamer, and chasing the seams of copper and tin that have shaped the county’s identity in Seam Chaser.

The book ranges far beyond Cornwall too. Other chapters take in the Isle of Mull, the Jurassic Coast at Charmouth in Dorset, drystone walling on the Llanberis Pass in Wales, sacred stone rows on Dartmoor, the sacred stones of Iona, ceremonial stones in London, Surrey and Tuscany, caves and potholes in Derbyshire, stone sculpture in Wiltshire and a monastery south of Siena, the South Pennine Watershed in West Yorkshire, and a reunion with an old friend on St Martin’s in the Isles of Scilly.

Travelogue, social history and memoir

The essays combine travelogue, social history and memoir, drawing on interviews, folklore and personal encounters with the landscapes themselves. The book moves from sacred monuments to modern sculpture, taking in mountains and caves as places of pilgrimage and refuge, ancient pathways and stone circles, Neolithic carvings and contemporary sculpture, and the everyday stone of quarries and buildings that underpins our daily lives.

About the author

Wyl is a novelist, editor and literary consultant. He is the author of the Man-Booker nominated novel and Observer Best Fiction of the year pick, The Many, and Fox Fires. His two previous non-fiction books have won the Holyer an Gof Award, the Roger Deakin Award and the 2025 Award for Excellence by the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild.

Born in Stockport, he now lives in Cornwall and is co-creator of the Cornish writing centre The Writers’ Block. He works with the Arvon Foundation and the National Literacy Trust, and lectures on creative writing at Falmouth University. A former journalist, Wyl has written for Radio 4’s Open Book, the Guardian, the Observer, and the journal Elementum.

Praise from fellow writers

Anjana Khatwa, author of The Whispers of Rock: Stories from the Earth, said: “Menmuir eloquently intertwines the human experience with that of stone, creating a book that shimmers with stories like a piece of crystalline granite catching the light in your hand.”

Tim Hannigan, author of The Granite Kingdom, called it “a fitting culmination to a fascinating trilogy,” while Ruth Allen, author of Weathering, described Wyl as “a warm and generous guide to the bedrock of our land, and the characters who champion it.”

The Spirit of Stone is available to pre-order on Amazon.