Orange Sky, Rising Water

From climate change to far-right politics, a captivating look at the Netherlands’ modern challenges—and a homage to the timeless ingenuity of the Dutch.

From deeply unpromising marshy beginnings, the Netherlands grew into a naval, imperial, artistic, cultural, economic, scientific, agricultural and footballing superpower. How did it get there? 

Journalist Nicholas Walton paints a vivid portrait of one of the world’s most remarkable places. Drawing on interviews and his own years living in the Netherlands, as well as Dutch history and popular culture, he tells a story of floods and riots, engineering brilliance and wartime treachery. Through ten walks around their towns and cities, fields and beaches, he reveals how the Dutch built a system that organised politics and tamed the water. But now, the country faces an unpredictable future: sea levels are rising, and extreme weather is swelling the rivers that cut across this flat land. At the same time, farmers are protesting with their tractors on the streets and voters are voicing their discontent over everything from immigration and inequality to a dysfunctional housing market. 

Amid the existential challenges of the twenty-first century, Orange Sky, Rising Water asks whether the extraordinary Dutch success story can continue—or will the country, its people and its way of life be swept away?

Nicholas Walton is a journalist and hiker based in Genoa. He has worked as a BBC correspondent in Sarajevo, Warsaw and Moscow, and for think tanks including the European Council on Foreign Relations and the World Resources Institute. His previous books with Hurst are Singapore, Singapura and Genoa, ‘La Superba’.