Review by George Monbiot.
In his recent book The Song of the Earth, the Shakespearean scholar Jonathan Bate made the extraordinary claim that poetry could save the world. I think Alastair McIntosh has just proved him right.

This is a world-changing book, one of the most important I have ever read, which will transform our perception of ourselves, our history and our surroundings, much as the work of Alice Miller and Sven Lindqvist has done. It is a first step towards the decolonisation of the soul: the essential imaginative process we have to undergo if we are to save the world from the political and environmental catastrophes that threaten it.

Soil and Soul is an extraordinary adventure in theology, economics, ecology, history and politics. It takes us from the Hebrides to the Solomon Islands, gently guiding us towards a new and remarkable philosophy by means of compelling, beautifully written stories. It overflows with ecstasy, quiet wisdom and love – love for humanity, for the world, for our failings and our possibilities.

McIntosh tells the story of his exceptional childhood, the historical destabilisation of the community in which he was brought up and, as he travels and reads, his growing understanding of why and how this happened. He explores the colonisation of resources, of human labour and, most importantly, of our own perceptions. Then he uses this emerging wisdom and experience to develop daring and innovative means of tackling the powers that have deprived us of ourselves. With the people of the Isle of Eigg, he helped devise a strategy for overthrowing the once-intractable power of the landlord. Their remarkable victory – the first known case in which Scottish tenants cleared a laird from his own estate – galvanised public demands for widespread land reform in Scotland. When a multinational quarrying company announced its intention to turn a Hebridean mountain into a giant superquarry, McIntosh persuaded the Native American Warrior Chief Sulian Stone Eagle Herney to come to Scotland and help assemble the first-ever theological submission to a public inquiry. The publicity converted a local issue into an international one, developing one of the most striking challenges to corporate power in British history.

McIntosh draws on these experiences to develop a radical politics of place. He transforms our engagement with soil and soul – once the preserve of the right – into a new and compelling vision of freedom and social justice. His radical liberation theology, rediscovering both the presence of God in nature and the neglected femininity of divine wisdom, is persuasive enough to encourage even such an indurated old sceptic as myself to take another look at God.

By these means, Alastair McIntosh shows us, we can break the spell of consent, unchain our imaginations and challenge both power itself and the anomie and disaggregation on which power’s abuse thrives. The work of a great thinker and a great poet, Soil and Soul shows us how we can, in McIntosh’s words, make ‘beauty blossom anew out of desecration’.

Make no claim to know the world if you have not read this book.