Click on the link below to join our monthly live discussion thread: your chance to share anything cultural you’ve been enjoying over the past month, and also recommendations on a specific theme. It’s a great resource if you’re after some tips for things to read, watch or listen to…
This September, we’re joined by expert guest author and publisher, Jon Woolcott from the wonderful Little Toller Books.
Alongside my questions for Jon, I’d love to know:
What have you loved reading / watching / seeing / listening to over this September?
On the theme of URBAN WILDERNESS: Where are your favourite wild spaces in the big cities? What books / films / music / art aid your explorations?
The live typing event takes place TODAY at 1.30-2pm, but if that time doesn’t work for you, please feel free to add your contribution whenever you like.
My first tip for enjoying the Urban Wilderness is THIS:
Join the discussion to discover where and what it is…
Anyone who is joining after the event, please feel free to share here your tips for anything cultural you've enjoyed this past month, and anything on the theme of urban wilderness.
I would recommend Common Ground by Rob Cowen published in 2015. A well written very talented voice of living on the edge-land of Harrogate. Thank you for reminding me of it, I'm going to re-read.
Hello all! Late to the discussion here. In September I read a wonderful children's book by Kate DiCamillo, 'The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.' It relates in some broader ways to the theme of "wildness" in the way Edward, a beloved toy rabbit that belongs to a young girl, gets lost on a transatlantic ship journey and finds himself in several different new homes and landscapes along the way, most of them much more wild and rural than his original suburban home. A great story with 'Velveteen Rabbit' feels.
I have a book called 'Spirit of Place: Artists, Writers, and the British Landscape.' I have not read it yet, but look forward to diving in sometime. Curious to know if anyone has read it.
I loved These Precious Days! I actually had forgotten she mentioned that specific book, but ended up reading The Beatryce Prophecy also by DiCamillo, and it led me back to Edward Tulane! Ann Patchett is one of my favorites.
My last question for Jon - but please also ask your own if you'd like!
This is slightly off-topic but I’m sure that many walking book clubbers would be really interested to hear about the wonderful charitable projects Pineapple Lane and Packed with Hope, which came from Little Toller Books. Please could you share some info with us? https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/packedwithhopecampaign
Oh, thank you for mentioning that. Yes, that’s the brainchild of my colleague Gracie. When the invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, we felt strongly that we had to do something and so she set about raising money and then sourcing thousands of backpacks for children, full of books, crayons, water bottles, little treats. She then found a warehouse locally that wasn’t in use, found volunteers and a haulage company to take the backpacks to the border where an NGO distributed them. This was all done in a matter of a few weeks. We thought though that this should be a long-term commitment and Pineapple Lane is the result – a new imprint of children’s books for those displace by conflict. We started with some picture books in English and Ukrainian, to be given out (and some are for sale in bookshops too) , but we hope this is the start of something even bigger. Sadly, these resources are much needed.
The Clearing is our online journal for new writing which explores all this, and which I edit. You can find it on our website. I’m interested in these themes and so I think there are lots of essays and poems there (and the occasional film and podcast) which do that. I really liked an essay about the old cooling towers at the power station at Didcot by a writer called Jane Hughes – well worth reading. It’s called We All Fall Down.
I’d point anyone in the direction of Derek Jarman in this instance – he seemed to understand, in his films and writings, something profound about place and culture, rural and urban.
Londoners should definitely have a look at Paul Wood’s blog The Street Tree, and his books, about the tree-filled capital and more. https://thestreettree.com/
Some of you might remember Patrick Galbraith, who joined us for a Zoom book club a year or so ago. His beautiful book, In Search of One Last Song, which looks at British birds and the people trying to save them often highlights the unexpected wilderness of our cities, not just the countryside.
I hope so – I went out to find it! Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch are all essentially urban, but in Poole harbour you can find tiny Brownsea Island (where there are still red squirrels) , in Christchurch there’s Saint Catherine’s Hill, a nature reserve which has a myth that it was the original planned site for the famous Priory, but that every morning when the stonemasons returned they found the stones had been moved overnight to the meeting point of the rivers Avon and Stour, which is where the Priory was in fact built.
absolutely. The island is owned by the National Trust now and you can take a boat ride there. But is hasn't always been in such good hands as a chapter in my book reveals (apologies for the plug).
Parkland Walk, which stretches from Finsbury Park in North London all the way up to Alexandra Palace, via Highgate, is a wonderful piece of urban wilderness. The park follows the tracks of a disused trainline, and you can even spot the old platforms amidst the bushes.
The London Wildlife Trust looks after several nature reserves in and around London – you can find them all listed here. I know and love Camley Street Natural Park, hidden away in the new developments around Kings Cross.
Personally I’m very drawn to books about London – Peter Ackroyd’s London is nothing short of a masterpiece, and anything by Iain Sinclair is well worth delving into. Recently I read the very strange piece of ‘psychogeography’ All the Devils Are Here by David Seabrook, which is an unsettling and compelling bit of writing about the towns of northern Kent. But if you want something slightly less odd I’d also be keen to talk about our book On the Marshes by Carol Donaldson – her life and wanderings through the marshlands of Kent.
I visited Haworth Parsonage a couple of weeks ago and picked up a book called the Bronte myth which shows that all that wild moor stuff was a bit of an invention by Mrs Gaskell .
We think all our books are great! I’m sometimes a little suspicious of the idea that somehow the city is urban and unwild and the countryside is all purely wild. England , especially, is a very human place whether rural or urban, and the farmed countryside is not at all wild. But I’d especially recommend Jeff Young’s Ghost Town, which is a memoir which is also an examination of the history, culture and people of Liverpool. It was shortlisted for the Costa Prize, and we hope to publish Jeff’s follow up too. In our classics series we also publish Glyn Hughes Millstone Grit, an account of a long walk across the post -ndustrial landscapes of Lancashire and Yorkshire, with an introduction by Benjamin Myers, who you might know from the TV adaptation of his novel The Gallows Pole.
Currently I am reading "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" and "The Body Keeps Score". Another more obscure book recently read that is notable is "Unlikely Animals".
I am rereading Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach, and I'm getting much more from my previous read! My favorite urban wilderness is a park near my house with a pond filled with ducks, it's a real respite from all the concrete jungle
Also, I note you say re-reading - do you often re-read books? I feel it's something we should all do more of! But with so many new books out there, it can feel hard to justify the time...
Yes, I reread often! I read mostly non-fiction and often want to remember some passages from previous books, at times when I feel they would serve my personal development. I reread maybe 2-3 books a year out of the 150 I read yearly, still lots of time for new content!
Jon - Little Toller publishes Richard Mabey’s The Unofficial Countryside, which is one of the key books about urban wilderness. Tell us a bit about his other books you publish – are there any others you’d especially recommend?
Yes, we were so pleased to publish this book. In a way everything in ‘new nature writing’ began with Richard – this book came out in the 1970s and explores a particular area of what we might now call ‘edgelands’ – the bit between the city and the countryside – the scruffy bits, where nature often thrives. When Richard turned 80 two years ago we also published some hardback editions of some of his other key books – his biography of the great 18th century naturalist Gilbert White (who wrote the Natural History of Selborne), his book Beechcombings, all about the Chiltern Hills, and his brilliant memoir Nature Cure, which is a key text, and a wonderful exploration of how nature can care for us, but more importantly, how we must care for nature. That seems very relevant today when we consider the reaction to the felling of the sycamore tree along Hadrian’s Wall.
Yes, of course. We started publishing in 2009 with three books that essentially were the great works of writing about the countryside, but which had been largely forgotten. We published a few – including Edward Thomas’ The South Country, Adrian Bell’s Men and the Fields and Clare Leighton’s Four Hedges, with beautiful new jackets and introductions by contemporary writers – for instance Robert Macfarlane wrote the introduction to The South Country. We’re a very small publisher (there are four of us) based in west Dorset. We don’t think of ourselves as a publisher of local books, but our rural location we think gives us an insight sometimes missing from the bigger publishers. Our ethos is a bit beyond ‘nature writing’ – we’re interested in anything that’s about nature, culture and the idea of ‘place’ – rural, urban or somewhere in between.
If anyone is interested in learning more about Rose Macaulay's life, I would recommend a biography by Jane Emery, and if one is interested about her exploration of mother-daughter relationships, I have a copy of a very interesting book called Women's Fiction Between the Wars: Mothers, Daughters and Writing by Heather Ingham, which also has chapters on Elizabeth Bowen and other very good novelists.
There is weekly blog called A London Inheritance whose author also does a walk called The Lost World of the Barbican https://alondoninheritance.com
The love charm of bombs by lara feigel has a lot o say about Rose Macaulay and ruins
Men at War by Luke Turner at the moment - it’s an exploration of masculinity during WWII and is an interesting counterpoint to Barbery and her exploits.
Yes I found far from Kensington especially interesting exploring this, and how believe/faith can cause people to be manipulated by unscrupulous people. It was very dark.
(NB - from Emily here, this was our first ever book!!!)
There is an old film (1964) called "It happened here: The Story of Hitler's England" (directed by Kevin Mollo and much of it filmed in Belsize Park).
It is a chilling film of hypothetical history and about a nurse who first collaborates with the Nazi invaders and then when their murdering starts in earnest feels compelled to join the resistance. A real eye opener to what it was like in the rest 0f Europe during the WW2.
Thanks Emily, I'm really pleased to join you. I should say I'm also staffing our little bookshop in Beaminster today so if I have to sell a book I may go quiet for a moment!
Anyone who is joining after the event, please feel free to share here your tips for anything cultural you've enjoyed this past month, and anything on the theme of urban wilderness.
I would recommend Common Ground by Rob Cowen published in 2015. A well written very talented voice of living on the edge-land of Harrogate. Thank you for reminding me of it, I'm going to re-read.
Thanks so much for sharing this Claire - great to have it in the mix here!
Haven't read any Gaskell but feel I ought to....
There's a v good book called Mrs Gaskell and me by Nell Stevens, which might be a good way in
Hello all! Late to the discussion here. In September I read a wonderful children's book by Kate DiCamillo, 'The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.' It relates in some broader ways to the theme of "wildness" in the way Edward, a beloved toy rabbit that belongs to a young girl, gets lost on a transatlantic ship journey and finds himself in several different new homes and landscapes along the way, most of them much more wild and rural than his original suburban home. A great story with 'Velveteen Rabbit' feels.
I have a book called 'Spirit of Place: Artists, Writers, and the British Landscape.' I have not read it yet, but look forward to diving in sometime. Curious to know if anyone has read it.
The Kate DiCamillo book is highly recommended by Ann Patchett is her book of essays "These Precious Days". Which I loved!
I loved These Precious Days! I actually had forgotten she mentioned that specific book, but ended up reading The Beatryce Prophecy also by DiCamillo, and it led me back to Edward Tulane! Ann Patchett is one of my favorites.
I love hearing all these book recommendations - and so glad you've both connected over the Ann Patchett, a wonderful writer!
Couldn't hold off, I've ordered Edward Tulane! Ann Patchett is such a great essay writer, This Is The Story of a Happy Marriage is excellent.
I'm enjoying reading all the comments.
Thanks Claire - wonderful to hear this on all fronts.
Spirit of Place sounds excellent. Alexandra Harris' books explore similar themes, I think.
As I was reading your description I was thinking OMG just like the velveteen rabbit - I see you had the same thought!!
I love the sound of both books, thank you for sharing.
"Bianco" has a pronunciation in Arabic?
Thanks so much for sharing Ashlyn.
Thank you so much Jon for joining us from Little Toller in Dorset - I'm impressed with how you manned the till and the computer simultaneously.
And thank you Pat, Sarah and Anick (Productive Happiness) for joining the thread and contributing to the discussion.
Thank you for having me on! Nice to chat to bookish types, always!
My last question for Jon - but please also ask your own if you'd like!
This is slightly off-topic but I’m sure that many walking book clubbers would be really interested to hear about the wonderful charitable projects Pineapple Lane and Packed with Hope, which came from Little Toller Books. Please could you share some info with us? https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/packedwithhopecampaign
https://www.pineapplelane.org/
Oh, thank you for mentioning that. Yes, that’s the brainchild of my colleague Gracie. When the invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, we felt strongly that we had to do something and so she set about raising money and then sourcing thousands of backpacks for children, full of books, crayons, water bottles, little treats. She then found a warehouse locally that wasn’t in use, found volunteers and a haulage company to take the backpacks to the border where an NGO distributed them. This was all done in a matter of a few weeks. We thought though that this should be a long-term commitment and Pineapple Lane is the result – a new imprint of children’s books for those displace by conflict. We started with some picture books in English and Ukrainian, to be given out (and some are for sale in bookshops too) , but we hope this is the start of something even bigger. Sadly, these resources are much needed.
Thank you for sharing this with us - such amazing work that you all do at Little Tolller!
Thank you, that's very kind.
Gosh - nearly 2pm!
On urban wildness I liked the book Edgelands by Michele Roberts and Paul Farley
Me too!
Yes! I've heard that's amazing, thanks for bringing it into the discussion.
Jon - Could you tell us a little about The Clearing. Are there any pieces on there that explore urban wilderness? https://www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing/
The Clearing is our online journal for new writing which explores all this, and which I edit. You can find it on our website. I’m interested in these themes and so I think there are lots of essays and poems there (and the occasional film and podcast) which do that. I really liked an essay about the old cooling towers at the power station at Didcot by a writer called Jane Hughes – well worth reading. It’s called We All Fall Down.
Yes, thanks for mentioning film and podcasts too!
Do you have any recommendations for other art forms that engage with the urban wild?
I’d point anyone in the direction of Derek Jarman in this instance – he seemed to understand, in his films and writings, something profound about place and culture, rural and urban.
YES! And his garden itself is a beautiful combination of urban and wild. thanks Jon.
Yes, it's an amazing place., isn't it?
Londoners should definitely have a look at Paul Wood’s blog The Street Tree, and his books, about the tree-filled capital and more. https://thestreettree.com/
Some of you might remember Patrick Galbraith, who joined us for a Zoom book club a year or so ago. His beautiful book, In Search of One Last Song, which looks at British birds and the people trying to save them often highlights the unexpected wilderness of our cities, not just the countryside.
Jon - Was urban wildness something you encountered while writing your book, Real Dorset?
I hope so – I went out to find it! Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch are all essentially urban, but in Poole harbour you can find tiny Brownsea Island (where there are still red squirrels) , in Christchurch there’s Saint Catherine’s Hill, a nature reserve which has a myth that it was the original planned site for the famous Priory, but that every morning when the stonemasons returned they found the stones had been moved overnight to the meeting point of the rivers Avon and Stour, which is where the Priory was in fact built.
Red squirrels!!??
absolutely. The island is owned by the National Trust now and you can take a boat ride there. But is hasn't always been in such good hands as a chapter in my book reveals (apologies for the plug).
Amazing!
Some of my favourite urban wilderness spots in London coming up here:
Parkland Walk, which stretches from Finsbury Park in North London all the way up to Alexandra Palace, via Highgate, is a wonderful piece of urban wilderness. The park follows the tracks of a disused trainline, and you can even spot the old platforms amidst the bushes.
That sounds exactly like more sort of thing!
I meant 'my'
The Dalston Curve Garden is a lovely spot, which also makes use of an abandoned bit of railway track. There’s a great café here too!
The London Wildlife Trust looks after several nature reserves in and around London – you can find them all listed here. I know and love Camley Street Natural Park, hidden away in the new developments around Kings Cross.
Does anyone have any secret wild London spots to share here?
Jon - how about beyond Little Toller, are there any other books about urban wilderness that you especially enjoy?
Personally I’m very drawn to books about London – Peter Ackroyd’s London is nothing short of a masterpiece, and anything by Iain Sinclair is well worth delving into. Recently I read the very strange piece of ‘psychogeography’ All the Devils Are Here by David Seabrook, which is an unsettling and compelling bit of writing about the towns of northern Kent. But if you want something slightly less odd I’d also be keen to talk about our book On the Marshes by Carol Donaldson – her life and wanderings through the marshlands of Kent.
Thanks for sharing these.
Yes I love Iain Sinclair. He is a brilliant speaker too!
He is. We actually publish his book about The Gower - Black Apples of Gower.
The Little Virtues made me go on and read lots more Ginzburg
Ah so glad to hear that. Which ones in particular?
I love Family Lexicon! And Valentino
Oh me too! Daunt has published them really beautifully. glad to hear this
I’m really enjoying catching up with some of your earlier reads Emily.
I visited Haworth Parsonage a couple of weeks ago and picked up a book called the Bronte myth which shows that all that wild moor stuff was a bit of an invention by Mrs Gaskell .
But why do we still love Jane Eyre so much ?
Also, have you read much Gaskell?
Interesting point Pat!
I love the feeling of magic and mystery in Jane Eyre - the voice carried on the wind. It was a bit reading moment for me in my childhood!
Hello sorry to be late to the chat!
That's fine, Sarah, thanks for joining!
Jon (when you've finished selling the books!) - Are there any other Little Toller books that engage with urban wilderness?
We think all our books are great! I’m sometimes a little suspicious of the idea that somehow the city is urban and unwild and the countryside is all purely wild. England , especially, is a very human place whether rural or urban, and the farmed countryside is not at all wild. But I’d especially recommend Jeff Young’s Ghost Town, which is a memoir which is also an examination of the history, culture and people of Liverpool. It was shortlisted for the Costa Prize, and we hope to publish Jeff’s follow up too. In our classics series we also publish Glyn Hughes Millstone Grit, an account of a long walk across the post -ndustrial landscapes of Lancashire and Yorkshire, with an introduction by Benjamin Myers, who you might know from the TV adaptation of his novel The Gallows Pole.
Wow, I can't wait to check these out!
New joiner Debra says:
Currently I am reading "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" and "The Body Keeps Score". Another more obscure book recently read that is notable is "Unlikely Animals".
From Instagram:
Vicki recommends My Husband
From Instagram:
The Exiled Soul recommends: Autumn Rounds by Jacques Poulin
I am rereading Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach, and I'm getting much more from my previous read! My favorite urban wilderness is a park near my house with a pond filled with ducks, it's a real respite from all the concrete jungle
Also, I note you say re-reading - do you often re-read books? I feel it's something we should all do more of! But with so many new books out there, it can feel hard to justify the time...
Yes, I reread often! I read mostly non-fiction and often want to remember some passages from previous books, at times when I feel they would serve my personal development. I reread maybe 2-3 books a year out of the 150 I read yearly, still lots of time for new content!
Thanks for sharing your reading habits!
That is an impressive number of books to read every year!!
Reading to me is like breathing! I spend numerous hours reading every day. It's more of a necessity to my mental health :)
Hello - thank you so much for sharing!
I love the way that even a tiny bit of wilderness can offer so much respite in urban life
If anyone else is joining us, please feel free to say hello and share your recommendations!
Jon - Little Toller publishes Richard Mabey’s The Unofficial Countryside, which is one of the key books about urban wilderness. Tell us a bit about his other books you publish – are there any others you’d especially recommend?
Yes, we were so pleased to publish this book. In a way everything in ‘new nature writing’ began with Richard – this book came out in the 1970s and explores a particular area of what we might now call ‘edgelands’ – the bit between the city and the countryside – the scruffy bits, where nature often thrives. When Richard turned 80 two years ago we also published some hardback editions of some of his other key books – his biography of the great 18th century naturalist Gilbert White (who wrote the Natural History of Selborne), his book Beechcombings, all about the Chiltern Hills, and his brilliant memoir Nature Cure, which is a key text, and a wonderful exploration of how nature can care for us, but more importantly, how we must care for nature. That seems very relevant today when we consider the reaction to the felling of the sycamore tree along Hadrian’s Wall.
Thanks Jon. Yes Nature Cure - that is one I must read! Such an important book in this field.
It really is!
Excuse me, just selling some books!
So Jon:
I love Little Toller Books! For the walking book clubbers who aren’t familiar with you, could you tell us a little bit about your ethos?
Yes, of course. We started publishing in 2009 with three books that essentially were the great works of writing about the countryside, but which had been largely forgotten. We published a few – including Edward Thomas’ The South Country, Adrian Bell’s Men and the Fields and Clare Leighton’s Four Hedges, with beautiful new jackets and introductions by contemporary writers – for instance Robert Macfarlane wrote the introduction to The South Country. We’re a very small publisher (there are four of us) based in west Dorset. We don’t think of ourselves as a publisher of local books, but our rural location we think gives us an insight sometimes missing from the bigger publishers. Our ethos is a bit beyond ‘nature writing’ – we’re interested in anything that’s about nature, culture and the idea of ‘place’ – rural, urban or somewhere in between.
Such wonderful books! I love that Edward Thomas in particular.
Me too!
In the run up to half past, I'm going to share here some recommendations shared in this month's Zoom book club:
Hermione said:
If anyone is interested in learning more about Rose Macaulay's life, I would recommend a biography by Jane Emery, and if one is interested about her exploration of mother-daughter relationships, I have a copy of a very interesting book called Women's Fiction Between the Wars: Mothers, Daughters and Writing by Heather Ingham, which also has chapters on Elizabeth Bowen and other very good novelists.
Michael
There is weekly blog called A London Inheritance whose author also does a walk called The Lost World of the Barbican https://alondoninheritance.com
The love charm of bombs by lara feigel has a lot o say about Rose Macaulay and ruins
Men at War by Luke Turner at the moment - it’s an exploration of masculinity during WWII and is an interesting counterpoint to Barbery and her exploits.
I really liked Luke's earlier book Into the Woods - relevant for today.
Charlotte:
It reminds me of Muriel Spark's explorations of religion in many of her books.
Hermione:
Yes I found far from Kensington especially interesting exploring this, and how believe/faith can cause people to be manipulated by unscrupulous people. It was very dark.
(NB - from Emily here, this was our first ever book!!!)
Sandra:
I have just read The Seamstress by Maria Duenas . Interesting book on spying
Stina:
There is an old film (1964) called "It happened here: The Story of Hitler's England" (directed by Kevin Mollo and much of it filmed in Belsize Park).
It is a chilling film of hypothetical history and about a nurse who first collaborates with the Nazi invaders and then when their murdering starts in earnest feels compelled to join the resistance. A real eye opener to what it was like in the rest 0f Europe during the WW2.
Hello and welcome Jon Woolcott from Little Toller Books - wonderful to have you here.
Thanks Emily, I'm really pleased to join you. I should say I'm also staffing our little bookshop in Beaminster today so if I have to sell a book I may go quiet for a moment!
I love it!
The gorgeous photo is of The World Peace Garden in Hampstead. It's just next to the overground.
If you are ever early for a walking book club, you’ll often find me there gathering my thoughts!
Does anyone else know it?
Hello everyone!
Hello everyone - I'm a little early today!