April 2025
A round-up of some of the things I’ve been writing, reading and doing this month.
Writing
On Substack:
Published elsewhere this month:
K is for Kings (and Queens!) is the latest in a series of posts for CPRE Bedfordshire, helping readers to explore the county via an A-Z of Bedfordshire places, landscapes and history. In this instalment I follow in the footsteps of some royal visitors to Bedfordshire – both kings and queens.
Book review – The Mars House by Natasha Pulley - reviewed for JRI as part of a series on climate fiction.
Hefted – a little bit about the inspiration behind my poem ‘Hefted’ which features in a new anthology.
Reading
This month’s five star read was the wonderful ‘The Rising Down. Lives in a Landscape’ by Alexandra Harris. Like her previous books ‘Weatherland: Writers & Artists Under English Skies’ and ‘Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper’ it was a fascinating read. Harris returns to her childhood home of West Sussex and combines personal memoir, place writing and local history to excellent effect, showing us the area both through her own eyes and through her use of hidden voices from the archives. I particularly liked the way she found links between her small, well defined patch and the wider world, both in terms of history and geography. It's written in a fragmentary style, we dip in and out as the records allow, and Harris is clear about where she is using her imagination to flesh out the stories. One to reread to fully absorb.
I also enjoyed rereading Roger Deakin’s classic ‘Waterlog. A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain.’ I first read it when I was researching the right to roam for a piece I was writing and had long meant to go back and read it as a piece of nature writing.1 Despite being in no way a swimmer, I really enjoyed this book. It's a great mix of travelogue, nature writing, local history and memoir, and Deakin evokes place and time beautifully. The book should be part of the call to arms to protect our waters, as well as making them more widely accessible.
Watching
I discovered ‘The Secret Life of Books’ on iPlayer and have been enjoying the archive of episodes enormously. The format sees writers, actors and broadcasters explore some of their favourite books, with input from academics, curators and other experts. At only 30 minutes, they are not particularly in depth but still provide interesting insights and are engagingly presented. There have been episodes I’ve enjoyed because I know the books well – for example Fiona Shaw on ‘The Mill On The Floss’, as well as ones that I knew much less about, like Dr Janina Ramirez on Spenser’s ‘The Faerie Queene’. It’s also how I discovered that I’ve never actually read ‘Cider With Rosie’, despite being convinced that I had!
Out and about
April brought some lovely spring weather so it’s been a month for appreciating nature both on the doorstep and a little further afield. At the start of the month there was a riverside walk in our local country park which was full of butterflies, something of a relief after last year when they were few and far between. I’d picked up my new glasses in the morning so the world was suddenly much more crisp and filled with wonder.
Later there was a trip to WWT Welney in Norfolk which provided an excellent day’s birding, including the first swallows of the year, shimmering flocks of black tailed godwits and circling marsh harriers.2
Over the Easter Weekend we went in search of bluebells in our local patch of woodland and were rewarded with one of the best shows in recent years. It was a beautiful afternoon, full of golden light and fresh green leaves.
I too am interested in your theological reading of the right to roam debate.
In Canada there are a number of provincial and municipal initiatives working to turn disused railway lines into trails, and we are permitted some recreational use of Crown land, but we've nothing in comparison to the rights you enjoy in the UK. I remember being particularly impressed when Scottish friends explained how permissive their wild camping rules are.
Speaking of rules, what a pity it is that the BBC iPlayer geoblocks Canadians from their content. We used to be a proper Commonwealth. Still, I managed to find a copy of Fiona Shaw's episode on The Mill on the Floss here:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3ilivz
I'm looking forward to watching it. Thanks so much for the tip.
"In the highly unlikely event that any of my readers are interested in a theological reading of the right to roam debate" - oh yes, I most certainly am! Bookmarked to read. I'd never thought of the theological angle to this current debate, which is such an interesting analytical lens.