*Top 10 Sunday Times bestseller*The Pebbles on the Beach was first published in 1954. This newly reissued edition includes a foreword by Robert Macfarlane. There is a handy illustrated guide to identifying pebbles on the reverse of the book jacket. Pebble-hunting is a pleasant hobby that makes little demand upon one’s patience and still less upon one’s physical energy. (You may even enjoy the hunt from the luxurious sloth of a deck chair). One of the true delights of the pebble-seeker is to read the stories in the stones – to determine whence and by what means they came to be there. We must always bear in mind that a pebble is a transient thing. It is in the half-way stage of a long existence . . . This is a book about the simple pleasure of pebble spotting. Clarence Ellis is a charming, knowledgeable and witty guide to everything you didn’t know there was to know about pebbles. He ruminates on what a pebble actually is, before showing us how they