As a practicing pagan, and nature writer, I write books about how to reconnect to nature, how to rediscover and connect to your inner self, and your sense of spirituality. I grew up in the wilds of a large national park (Dartmoor) and have found that this colours and shapes everything I do. I spent thirty years living and working in London, and missed Dartmoor every day I was away. Whilst living in the city I had to learn ways to connect to nature, which is how I discovered my spiritual path. I was lucky enough to stage an escape and return home at forty-seven, and have been writing about it ever since.
I wrote
The Wheel of the Year: Your Rejuvenating Guide to Connecting with Nature's Seasons and Cycles
I love this book because it is like a gentle meander through the woods with the author. You get a real sense of what details draw him in, what his fascinations are, and his discoveries through the turning seasons.
It is often said that in order to really get to know a place, it is good to walk the same route in nature every day, and that was the sense I got with this book. The author knows the landscape of the woods so well, it is like he is visiting an old friend.
When I was stuck indoors a lot during the COVID lockdown, it really helped me to remember why nature is so healing, and also inspired my own walks at this time which were spent in a small area of woodland in London.
'BRITAIN'S FINEST LIVING NATURE WRITER' - THE TIMES
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER and BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week' from 'indisputably, one of the best nature-writers of his generation' (Country Life)
Written in diary format, The Wood is the story of English woodlands as they change with the seasons. Lyrical and informative, steeped in poetry and folklore, The Wood inhabits the mind and touches the soul.
For four years John Lewis-Stempel managed Cockshutt wood, a particular wood - three and half acres of mixed woodland in south west Herefordshire - that stands as exemplar for all the small woods…
I love this book as I used it as a road map of swimming adventures when I moved back home to the West Country after thirty years of living in the city.
I was faced with the challenge of not knowing where to swim, as we didn’t really go in the water when I was a child. The author visits a plethora of favourite swimming spots with a group of friends, and I felt like I was accompanying them on their trips.
I was able to use the book as a guide, to go and visit all the spots Lynne Roper mentions in her diaries, safe in the knowledge I was visiting places that people have swum in for years.
Gifts from a Challenging Childhood
by
Jan Bergstrom,
Learn to understand and work with your childhood wounds. Do you feel like old wounds or trauma from your childhood keep showing up today? Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed with what to do about it and where to start? If so, this book will help you travel down a path…
I loved this book as I live near one of the ‘lost’ rainforests Guy Shrubsole talks about, and I was able to learn more about it, and understand why the wood is such a special place, not just to me personally, but on an ecological level too.
I had heard a rumour that my local woodland is a temperate rainforest, but I had no idea what the basis was for that idea.
In the book Guy Shrubsole explains how to spot a temperate rainforest (a place where there are epiphytes present – plants growing on plants growing on plants) as well as exploring some of the mythology we humans create to explain the presence of these places in nature. It goes a lovely balance between scientific fact and storytelling.
WINNER OF THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION 2023
The Sunday Times Science Book of the Year
As seen on Countryfile
'If anyone was born to save Britain's rainforests, it was Guy Shrubsole' Sunday Times
Shortlisted for the Richard Jefferies Society Literary Prize
Temperate rainforest may once have covered up to one-fifth of Britain, inspiring Celtic druids, Welsh wizards, Romantic poets, and Arthur Conan Doyle's most loved creations. Though only fragments now remain, they are home to a dazzling variety of luminous life-forms.
In this awe-inspiring investigation, Guy Shrubsole travels through the Western Highlands and the Lake District, down to the…
I first fell in love with this book as a teenager. I first discovered it when the BBC did a fabulous adaptation of the novel and I was compelled to go and read the novel.
The book follows the story of Prudence Sarn, a woman living with a facial disfigurement at the time of the Corn Laws and the Napoleonic Wars. Her brother decides to make his fortune growing corn on the family farm, and promises Pru a cure for her facial scars if she helps him, however, his obsession with money soon turns them towards disaster, and the local community turn on Pru, accusing her of being a witch.
Returning to academic study in my forties, I wrote my PhD novel and thesis on the life of Mary Webb, a nature mystic, and it just served to make me love the novel even more. Webb’s descriptions of rural Shropshire are not just the setting for the novel – they are intrinsic to the plotline.
Gifts from a Challenging Childhood
by
Jan Bergstrom,
Learn to understand and work with your childhood wounds. Do you feel like old wounds or trauma from your childhood keep showing up today? Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed with what to do about it and where to start? If so, this book will help you travel down a path…
I loved this book as it follows the author’s quest to reconnect with nature and rediscover a sense of enchantment following the challenges of the COVID lockdowns.
Split into the four elements – earth, air, fire, and water – the author describes her explorations of each element in her life and how if leads her back to herself. I love the book as it enabled me to see nature through the author’s eyes, and with a perspective that is in some ways almost entirely different to my own, and in others, in harmony with my own thoughts and feelings. It was indeed an enchanting read.
'It will do your soul good to read this.' NIGELLA LAWSON
A balm for our times from the internationally bestselling author of Wintering.
Our sense of enchantment is not only sparked by grand things. The awe-inspiring, the numinous, is all around us, all the time. It is transformed by our deliberate attention. The magic is of our own conjuring.
'A total joy . . . Thoughtful, patient and beautifully written, like walking with a friend as dusk settles, this is the book your soul needs right now.' CARIAD LLOYD
As a Wiccan priestess, I'm used to observing the seasons of nature as part of my spiritual practice. The Wheel of the Year, is about how to nurture your wellbeing and reconnect to nature using the eight festivals of the Wheel as a template. These include Midwinter, Imbolc, Spring Equinox, Beltane, Midsummer, Lammas, Autumn Equinox, and Samhain or Hallowe’en. For each festival, I describe the history and traditions celebrated in the British Isles and overseas, suggest activities you might like to explore, including some spell work and crafting techniques, and also outline a ritual you can perform alone or with friends to mark the day. You don’t have to be a pagan to find the book helpful – just spiritually curious, and a lover of nature.
