How to Tie Knots

Tim MacWelch

Modern Books

£9.99

Tim MacWelch founded the Earth Connection School of Primitive Living Skills. It sounds self-consciously millennial but it’s an approach Baden Powell would have approved. These knots are for anyone who camps, fishes, climbs or sails and who may need to improvise. MacWelch explains, for instance, how a sheet bend can be used to attach rope to the corner of a piece of fabric, ‘when the grommets are torn out, absent or too small’.  His focus is on self-reliance and being prepared for emergency. Perhaps one day I might need climbing and fishing knots and instructions how to make my own rope – even from ‘stretched dried intestines’ (though I’m rather hoping to avoid a crisis on that scale!) This would make an excellent gift.