Wyl Menmuir

The definitive showcase of the year’s finest British short stories ‘Bravo to Salt’s beacon of delight and intrigue – its annual collection of the UK’s best short stories, from established and emerging voices.’ —Duncan Minshull Now relaunched for a new era, Best British Short Stories returns with a bold new look and a renewed commitment to celebrating the art of the short story. As we enter our fifteenth volume, this much-loved annual collection continues to be the go-to anthology for readers seeking the most exciting and diverse voices in contemporary British fiction. Assembled by series editor Nicholas Royle, Best British Short Stories 2025 presents a stellar selection of stories first published in 2024, drawn from magazines, journals, anthologies, collections, chapbooks, and online. Whether you’re a devoted follower or discovering the series for the first time, this new edition reaffirms our mission to champion storytelling in all its forms. ‘If the latest iteration of Salt’s Best British Short Stories collection is anything to go by then the genre remains in safe hands.’ —Lawrence Foley, TLS Featuring stories by: David Bevan, Rose Biggin, Christopher Burns, Ian Critchley, Pippa Goldschmidt, Linden Hibbert, Hannah Hoare, Catrin Kean, Roger Luckhurst, Baret Magarian, Wyl Menmuir, Alison Moore, Okechukwu Nzelu, Simon Okotie, Imogen Reid, C. D. Rose, Iain Sinclair, Elizabeth Stott, Mark Valentine, and Naomi Wood.

From the lonely heights of mountains to the womblike depths of caves, stone has always drawn us in. In The Spirit of Stone, Wyl Menmuir explores the many ways in which rock and earth form part of our identities, histories and futures. Across Britain and Ireland, rock is everywhere beneath our feet, shaping not only our landscapes but also our imaginations and the ways we live together. Moving across these lands, Wyl Menmuir’s essays combine travelogue, social history and memoir, bringing together interviews, folklore and personal encounters with the landscapes themselves. From sacred monuments to modern sculpture, this book reveals how stone grounds us, challenges us and inspires us, such as: Mountains and caves as places of pilgrimage, danger, refuge and wonder. Ancient pathways and stone circles that leave traces of our ancestors written into the land. Marks and monuments, from Neolithic carvings to contemporary sculpture, art that endures across centuries. Everyday stone, for example the quarries, buildings and raw materials that underpin our daily lives. These landscapes are not static; they are full of movement and action. Menmuir shows how the ground beneath our feet connects to our deepest philosophies and our search for meaning. With lyrical prose and vivid descriptions, he captures both the vastness of stone landscapes and the intimate ways they shape individual lives. The Spirit of Stone follows on from The Draw of the Sea and The Heart of the Woods, completing a trilogy of explorations into our relationship with place. Where the first two books took readers to the water’s edge and into the forest, this book journeys into the landscapes of rock, stone and earth, reflecting on how they continue to define us. Resonant with the work of Robert Macfarlane, Kathleen Jamie and Peter Ross, yet strikingly original in its breadth and vision, The Spirit of Stone is a profound meditation on belonging, endurance and our shared human story written in stone.

Just as a parent leaves a legacy to their child, a tree leaves a legacy to its surroundings. A deep and explorative companion piece to the Roger Deakin Award-winning The Draw of The Sea. Throughout history, trees have determined the tools we use, the boats we build, the stories we tell about the world and ourselves, the songs we sing, and some of our most important rituals. As such, our lives are intertwined with those of the trees and woodlands around us. In this journey deep into the woods, Wyl Menmuir travels the length and breadth of Britain and Ireland to meet the people who plant trees, the ecologists who study them, those who shape beautiful objects and tools from wood, and those who use them to help others. Wyl also explores how our relationship with trees is enduring, now and in the future – what we get out of spending time around trees, the ways in which our relationship with them has changed over time, and the ways in which our future is interconnected with theirs. Written in close collaboration with makers, crafters, bodgers, and woodsmen and women in order to better understand the woods they know so well, the joys and frustrations of working with a living material, and the stories of their craft and skills, The Heart of The Woods will delight anyone who enjoys walking among the trees, and anyone who, when lost, has found themselves in the woods. Chapters include:WOODLAND PLANTER: A woodland in becoming and an ancient yew grove on the border of North Wales and EnglandRITUAL WEAVER: Willow coffin making in CornwallWOODLORE GATHERER: Science among the trees at Wytham Woods, OxfordshireHEARTWOOD CARVER: Among the bodgers in a field outside CambridgeBOAT BUILDER: A woodland community in the heart of Glasgow’s former docklandsLANDSCAPE SHAPER: Re-wilding the Scottish Highlands and an organised trespass in DevonWISH WEARER: The clootie well at Munlochy on The Black Isle, Scottish Highlands, a family tree on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, and the tree at Sycamore Gap, NorthumbriaFOREST BATHER: Swimming at Swallowship Pool, Devil’s Water, and Letah Woods NorthumberlandMYTH WALKER: Walks in the fictional woods at Wenlock Edge, ShropshireWAY FOLLOWER: Traditional carpentry in Takayama, JapanFIRE LIGHTER: The stories we find among the flames and embers, Ennistymon, Ireland SOUND CREATOR: A pub on Ireland’s west coast and a guitar-builder in North Wales APPLE WAILER: Wassailing in CornwallTREE WORSHIPPER: An ancient yew grove in North Wales

Just as a parent leaves a legacy to their child, a tree leaves a legacy to its surroundings. A deep and explorative companion piece to the Roger Deakin Award-winning The Draw of The Sea. Throughout history, trees have determined the tools we use, the boats we build, the stories we tell about the world and ourselves, the songs we sing, and some of our most important rituals. As such, our lives are intertwined with those of the trees and woodlands around us. In this journey deep into the woods, Wyl Menmuir travels the length and breadth of Britain and Ireland to meet the people who plant trees, the ecologists who study them, those who shape beautiful objects and tools from wood, and those who use them to help others. Wyl also explores how our relationship with trees is enduring, now and in the future – what we get out of spending time around trees, the ways in which our relationship with them has changed over time, and the ways in which our future is interconnected with theirs. Written in close collaboration with makers, crafters, bodgers, and woodsmen and women in order to better understand the woods they know so well, the joys and frustrations of working with a living material, and the stories of their craft and skills, The Heart of The Woods will delight anyone who enjoys walking among the trees, and anyone who, when lost, has found themselves in the woods. Chapters include:WOODLAND PLANTER: A woodland in becoming and an ancient yew grove on the border of North Wales and EnglandRITUAL WEAVER: Willow coffin making in CornwallWOODLORE GATHERER: Science among the trees at Wytham Woods, OxfordshireHEARTWOOD CARVER: Among the bodgers in a field outside CambridgeBOAT BUILDER: A woodland community in the heart of Glasgow’s former docklandsLANDSCAPE SHAPER: Re-wilding the Scottish Highlands and an organised trespass in DevonWISH WEARER: The clootie well at Munlochy on The Black Isle, Scottish Highlands, a family tree on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, and the tree at Sycamore Gap, NorthumbriaFOREST BATHER: Swimming at Swallowship Pool, Devil’s Water, and Letah Woods NorthumberlandMYTH WALKER: Walks in the fictional woods at Wenlock Edge, ShropshireWAY FOLLOWER: Traditional carpentry in Takayama, JapanFIRE LIGHTER: The stories we find among the flames and embers, Ennistymon, Ireland SOUND CREATOR: A pub on Ireland’s west coast and a guitar-builder in North Wales APPLE WAILER: Wassailing in CornwallTREE WORSHIPPER: An ancient yew grove in North Wales

WINNER OF THE HOLYER AN GO AWARD 2023 Wyl Menmuir’s The Draw of the Sea is a beautifully written and deeply moving portrait of the sea and the people whose livelihoods revolve around it, examining the ephemeral but universal pull the sea holds over the human imagination. Since the earliest stages of human development, the sea has fascinated and entranced us. It feeds us, sustaining communities and providing livelihood, but it also holds immense destructive power that threatens to destroy all we have created. It connects us to faraway places, offering the promise of new lands and voyages of discovery, but also shapes our borders, carving divisions between landmasses and eroding the very ground beneath our feet. In this lyrical meditation on what it is that draws us to the waters' edge, author Wyl Menmuir tells the stories of the people whose lives revolve around the coastline and all it has to offer. In twelve interlinked chapters, Menmuir explores the lives of local fishermen steeped in the rich traditions of a fishing community, the beachcombers who wander the shores in search of the varied objects that wash ashore and the stories they tell, and all number of others who have made their lives around the sea. In the specifics of these livelihoods and their rich histories and traditions, Wyl Menmuir captures the universal human connection to the ocean’s edge. Into this seductive tapestry Wyl weaves the story of how the sea has beckoned, consoled and restored him. The Draw of the Sea is a meaningful and moving work into how we interact with the environment around us and how it comes to shape the course of our lives. As unmissable as it is compelling, as profound as it is personal, this must-read book will delight anyone familiar with the intimate and powerful pull which the sea holds over us.

A lost girl and a sprawling map of an unsettling city. Wren Lithgow has followed her concert pianist mother around the cities of Europe for almost two decades. When they arrive in the mysterious city-state of O, where Wren was conceived during a time of civil war, she resolves to find man she believes is her father. As the city closes in around her, Wren gives herself over to a place of which she understands nothing, but to which she feels a profound connection, in a story of the watchers and the watched, the ways in which we conceive of home and, finally, the possibility of living on our own terms.

`There were once people who walked lightly. Who heard, in the space between their footsteps, reverberations and echoes of the fissures and caverns that lay below. Otherworlds and underworlds. Places that spoke to them.’ In this darkly atmospheric story, a young couple on their honeymoon set out to explore Cheddar Gorge, only to find themselves increasingly distanced from one another as the presence of the claustrophobic caves closes in around them…

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016 Observer Best Fiction of 2016 Den of Geek Top Books of 2016 Timothy Buchannan buys an abandoned house on the edge of an isolated village on the coast, sight unseen. When he sees the state of it he questions the wisdom of his move, but starts to renovate the house for his wife, Lauren to join him there. When the villagers see smoke rising from the chimney of the neglected house they are disturbed and intrigued by the presence of the incomer, intrigue that begins to verge on obsession. And the longer Timothy stays, the more deeply he becomes entangled in the unsettling experience of life in the small village. Ethan, a fisherman, is particularly perturbed by Timothy’s arrival, but accedes to Timothy’s request to take him out to sea. They set out along the polluted coastline, hauling in weird fish from the contaminated sea, catches that are bought in whole and removed from the village. Timothy starts to ask questions about the previous resident of his house, Perran, questions to which he receives only oblique answers and increasing hostility. As Timothy forges on despite the villagers’ animosity and the code of silence around Perran, he starts to question what has brought him to this place and is forced to confront a painful truth. The Many is an unsettling tale that explores the impact of loss and the devastation that hits when the foundations on which we rely are swept away.