I’m a writer and photographer based in Hebden Bridge in the West Yorkshire Pennines.
My interests include the natural world, the British countryside, science in general, and Charles Darwin in particular. I combined these interests in my first book, On the Moor: Science, History and Nature on a Country Walk.
I’m currently working on a book about looking at the world Through Darwin’s Eyes.
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On the Rocks, April 2026
Some unexpected thrills sitting on what remains of my favourite Anglesey rock.
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Lichen timelapse
A project to take photographs of the same lichen over many years.
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When rocks take a walk
In which I follow the trail of an itinerant rock!
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Corresponding with Sir David Attenborough
In which the great science communicator fails to resolve an important dispute about fish.
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Read-later triage
How I filter my read-later bookmarks into notes, posts and newsletters.
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frant (v., n.)
Oystercatchers are in a permanent state of frant.
Sign up for my free newsletters
Richard Carter’s newsletters
RICH TEXT: My personal newsletter about science, history and nature writing.
DARWIN NEWSLETTER: Celebrating the grandeur in Charles Darwin’s view of life.
Latest newsletters
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Rich Text newsletter No. 37: ‘These people knew mammoths!’
Ice age art • Robert Macfarlane • Kathleen Jamie • medieval poems • lichen • Barbarian Conspiracy • the Shipping Forecast • escaping the entropy • and more…
- Darwin the botanist • UNESCO recognition • Darwin’s address book • Charles Lyell • Leonard Jenyns • punctuated equilibria • what the heck are chins for? • and lots more…
Buy my book
On the Moor: science, history and nature on a country walk
…wonderfully droll, witty and entertaining… At their best Carter’s moorland walks and his meandering intellectual talk are part of a single, deeply coherent enterprise: a restless inquiry into the meaning of place and the nature of self.
—Mark Cocker, author and naturalist
