Caught by the River

Persistence of Ache / The Thaw Begins

2026-06-10T22:09:33Z

A poem by Ruby Butler.

Morning tightens its belt of mist.
Something unhooks in me,
a lark’s note caught low,
where the body keeps its weather.

I have known this ache before:
not pain or hunger,
but the iron-taste before rain
when the ground remembers old heat.
It tucks itself under the ribs,
a curled animal, warm and watchful.

Your name is nowhere here,
yet the nettles flinch as if brushed.
Sap runs bitter-sweet in the cut ash,
ambering the air.
I stand too close to the thrum of it —
that quickening,
that wrongness which knows how to sing.

The land is moving me on.
Fields loosen their stitches.
The road darkens with thaw,
and stones speak once, then fall quiet.
Behind me, the house keeps breathing,
walls salted with touch,
windows holding a light I didn’t earn.

I carry only what won’t stay still:
a pulse, a smell of crushed fennel,
the bruise of last words not said.
Even the river turns its face away,
shouldering south,
taking the long way round the truth.

By evening, a new sky opens,
clean, unpromised.
Swallows score it with their knives of flight.
Something in me loosens its grip,
though the taste remains:
dark honey, green leaf,
the sweetness that knows its own undoing.

Follow Ruby on Instagram here. See her poems previously published on the site here.

Raised on Radio

2026-06-10T16:52:59Z

In the company of Paul Rees’ ‘Raised on Radio – Power Ballads, Cocaine & Payola: The AOR Glory Years 1976-1986’, Travis Elborough dips into the history of Adult Orientated Rock — the sound of a confident, car-driving North America.

As with books and movies, commercial success in pop music is no guarantee of critical credibility. Reviewers, and especially music journalists in the age of print when the likes of Rolling Stone passed pollice verso judgements with imperial might, could be awfully sniffy about stuff that people enjoyed. No genre, argues Paul Rees, was more scorned by the conoscenti than Adult Orientated Rock, also known as Album Orientated Rock or ‘AOR’, a musical form denounced in some quarters as ‘corporate rock’ that came of age in the mid-1970s and was largely defined by the power ballad.

Its prevailing sound, in Rees’ summary, was ‘clean, polished, finely nuanced’ with ‘bitter-sweet pop melodies married to plangent guitar riffs.’ The records of its greatest bands (Journey, Foreigner, Boston, REO Speedwagon and Toto), sold in their millions. Their music, Rees argues, became by the Reagan era, ‘the reigning soundtrack of Middle America.’ Yet none of those acts, as he points out, ever graced the cover of Rolling Stone and Foreigner would have to wait until 2024 to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Toto’s lead guitarist Steve Lukather grumbles that they spent over forty years as ‘the redhead stepchild of rock ’n’ roll’ as far as the critics were concerned.

Titled after a 1986 album by Journey, Raised on Radio is Rees’ attempt to redress that injustice. The book, composed as an oral history from interviews, old and new, lets the artists and their enablers speak for themselves. On occasion it also gives them enough rope to hang themselves, Spinal Tap-style. One Kansas member is saluted by a bandmate, for instance, as ‘a modern-day Mozart.’

While Rees fields these voices with the kind of precision fitting to an œuvre its detractors thought too slick by half, perhaps only the most die-hard fans will have heard of everyone here. This critic found the five-page cast list at the front as useful as any provided in Russian novels for keeping track of exactly who was who. And with the honorable exceptions of Pat Benatar, Cyndi Lauper, and the Wilson sisters, Ann and Nancy, of Heart, it’s a boys’ club and, for the most part, as pale as it is male. That said, Toto, who Lukather describes as ‘the whitest motherfuckers in Hollywood’, would nevertheless provide the backbone to Michael Jackson’s Thriller and collaborated with Miles Davis.

This was quintessentially the sound of a confident, car-driving North America, as reflected in the names of such bands as Chicago and Kansas and Illinois’s REO Speedwagon, christened after ‘a high-speed heavy-duty truck’. AOR was birthed by crack musicians who’d paid their dues playing roadhouses in the Midwest and Oregon. One of its foundational documents is the eponymous debut album by Boston, released in the bicentennial year: a record containing the classic rock behemoth ‘More Than a Feeling’.

FM stereo radio, which by the early 1970s had become standard on most cars in America, was to be the making of AOR, quite literally. While station programmers and DJs gave airtime, their reasons for doing so were not always altruistic. Inducements ranged from straight up cash to nose-down cocaine covered under what record companies euphemistically termed ‘independent promotion’. But the music itself was produced to be heard at its best on car stereos. Dennis Churchilll-Dries, frontman of White Sister, recalls that the Record Plant studio in Hollywood in this period had its own FM radio broadcast receiver for demoing tapes on. Bands could dial in to hear what their latest recordings sounded like on ‘the radio in your car in the parking lot.’

Cars — the flasher the better — appear to have been what many of the acts splashed their cash on too. At the end of 1976, Boston guitarist Barry Goudreau spent all his $25,000 advance on a Porsche 911. His reasoning was that if his celebrity ended the next day, he would still have acquired an impressive car. England’s Def Leppard would dismiss the services of Meatloaf composer Jim Steinman, claiming that they thought they ‘got the Ferrari’ only to be lumbered with ‘a secondhand Ford Cortina’ (roughly a Pinto). The group’s 1987 multi-million selling album Hysteria, boasting the ‘signature multi-harmony production’ of Mutt Lange, hitmaker for The Cars and AC-DC, provides the curtain call to Rees’ glory years here.

Having weathered the arrival of MTV and pop music videos, well-financed AOR groups with promos enjoyed disproportionate coverage on the channel in part because there were so few to begin with. But by the late 1980s, the now CD-buying public just moved on. Hair-metal bands like Guns N’ Roses won the hearts of hard rockers and contemporary country, benefiting from similarly whizzy studio work, reclaimed the ear of the rust belt. 1990s grunge darlings Nirvana would dance on the grave of AOR with their sardonic ‘Radio Friendly Unit Shifter’.

But AOR had the last laugh. On 3 January 2024, Forbes reported that Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ was now ‘Officially the Biggest Song of All Time’ having clocked up over 2 billion streams on Spotify. AOR’s influence also pervades the more recent output of Taylor Swift. As Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott notes, Swift’s mother was a fan of his group. Since the superstar was born in 1989, Elliott hazards the thought that ‘She was listening to Hysteria in the womb’. And that, surely, is this enjoyable book’s most provocative idea: that the reigning Queen of Pop had AOR piped into her in utero.

‘Raised on Radio – Power Ballads, Cocaine & Payola: The AOR Glory Years 1976-1986’ is out now and available here, published by Constable (£23.75).

Travis Elborough’s books include ‘Atlas of Vanishing Places’, winner of Edward Stanford Travel Book Award, and ‘Through The Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles’. See more of Travis’s work for Caught by the River here.

Save The Lammermuirs

2026-06-08T16:43:49Z

The Lammermuirs are one of Scotland’s most treasured rural landscapes, known for their wildlife, open moorland, dark skies, hill farming, heritage and tranquillity. This morning, Benjamin Myers wrote to us with news of plans to build an industrial-scale data centre on them.

Dear landscape-loving writers and friends,

For 13 years I’ve been lucky enough to regularly stay at the Gordon Burn Trust’s cottage in the tiny village of Longformacus (pop. 66) in the Lammermuir Hills of Berwickshire.

All my novels have been partially written there. The moors, woods and bird life is exceptional; I have wandered for weeks at time, barely seeing a soul, and enjoying that ‘full immersion’ that I’m sure you have experienced.

Then last week, as I completed my next book, Whiteadder/Wolfspider – partially named for the river nearby – I discovered a huge A.I. date centra is set to destroy the surrounding habitats (I don’t use the word ‘destroy’ lightly). A fightback has begun, but can 66 locals defeat a $2 billion project? We shall see.

I’m calling upon likeminded nature lovers and writers to consider signing/sharing a Change.org petition to oppose this project.

BBC story here.

Many thanks –

Ben

In case you need any more convincing, revisit Ben’s 2014 piece on the sanctity of the Longformacus landscape, in which he presciently writes:

I have a theory that solitude and silence will become the chief currency of the future, as near-necessary as water – and just as nourishing. Modern media might keep us interconnected, but the global conversation is relentless. What we will increasingly crave – and find difficult to achieve – is, I suspect, silence and solitude. And space. Space in which to reflect, observe and remove the masks we wear daily. In the future everybody will be anonymous for fifteen minutes.

You know what to do.

Deep Field

2026-06-06T01:30:29Z

Newly published by Cornwall’s Ancient Magic Books, Deep Field presents a large collection of artist Tom Sewell’s photographs for the first time. Taken out on walks and mixed with images of daily life, the book reads as visual notebook to Tom’s main practice. It also includes several images of Tom’s sculptures and a beautiful foreword by the artist, who states: “The best I’ve got to hold on to outside my memory is these images.”

In the foreword, the artist continues:

“I saw a thousand images once
But they were all wrong
If I figured out who I was maybe I wouldn’t have to look
Time seems to present them to me
Image upon image
All a translation
Of something that’s already gone
A new thing from an old thing
Always stuck in a loop
Back and forth
Between and again
Whatever it is I watch out from
A brain an eye a mind
It seems like I’m going forward
And maybe I am
But also maybe I’m gone
At the same time
Lost and found
Always looking
Always finding
Never being found

And everyone is just talking to their screens about what is in front of them on the computer as if there isn’t a supra-galactic great attractor drawing their bodies through space on a globe rotating beyond the speed of sound itself around an exploding ball of energy and the sky is full of water and weightless winged beaked bone bodies singing to their existence, which is also all of ours.

I want to live outside the world and look back in, wondering where the kindness went that I see so clearly in the blackbird on the telephone line, calling back into the the grid but not being heard. People stare at glittering sand, swift-written shouts, fear-cries from inside. There is an oak tree from a century ago softly sitting, grabbing clods and holding. Will it hold my son as I hold him and we dance towards tomorrow, growing together outside.”

Deep Field is available in a First Edition of 250 (£30) direct from Ancient Magic Books.

Established in 2020 in Cornwall, Ancient Magic is an independent publisher with a focus on handmade books and photography.

Book of the Month: June

2026-06-05T18:24:08Z

Newly published by Sceptre, ‘Rough Edges’, our June Book of the Month, sees Natasha Carthew explore the villages, towns and cities of our coast, meeting the people fighting to keep these places alive. Read an extract below.

Growing up in coastal poverty, the routes available to me were rabbit-burrow narrow. Very often, they were barely visible between thin-wire briar and thick brick walls. So, from my earliest days, I could be forgiven for not knowing what opportunity looked like, except that I wanted it.

Without our tight-knit council-house community of mostly women, my sense of who I was and where I was meant to go would have been unclear, my upbringing and progress as a youngster a whole lot harder.

The need for community is present in us from birth, as important as food, water, warmth and shelter. When it comes to building the foundation for our ability to survive and thrive, community is what makes the difference, the grounding force that gives us hope, trust and perhaps even keeps us alive. Our need for social connection is rooted deep within us biologically – not just as individuals, but as a species. It drills down into the core of us, bone long and belly deep, it is the nature of us.

In the natural world, community is defined as an assembly of interacting plants, animals and other organisms that repeatedly come together under similar environmental conditions across the landscape and seascape. Our beautiful British coastline is home to a million habitats that house such communities, including those found in cliffs, rocky shores, sand and shingle beaches, sand dunes, mudflats, salt marshes and machair (low-lying arable or grazing land formed by sand and shell fragments deposited by the wind).

Throughout childhood, nature was my constant companion. I was poor in every practical respect of the word, but rich in the colours of sea glass, shells and hedgerow flowers, prosperous in the saline drift of early morning fog and the taste of blackberries in September, potatoes in October and winkles picked off the rocks in summer, all by my own hand.

I’m well aware that, for many, my childhood seems ideal, the thought of long languid days spent playing on the sand, swimming with the tide and gazing into rockpools, but when poverty hangs over you, even when you’re very young and don’t recognise it as such, the feeling of hardship and struggle is never far away, no matter how beautiful your surroundings. Nature, on this journey, a journey of transience and uncertainty carried from childhood, is my trusty sidekick, allowing me to sing into its wind whilst walking unacquainted territory. The unfamiliar becomes familiar with the handhold of a flint pebble on Brighton beach, or the brush of amber sand in my hair along the coast of Northumberland.

Mother Nature – both my protector and my constant, in childhood and throughout my life.

The natural world just gets on with it. When considering that an ecological community is defined as a group of species that are commonly found together, I immediately think of the proximity of the communities of which we are all a part – the ones we are born into and the ones we move into and through. Like seeds, each and every one of us is meant to land and drift.

‘Rough Edges: Where Land Meets Water, the Untold Stories of Coastline Communities’ is out now and available here, published by Sceptre (£19.00)

Now Playing

2026-06-04T17:43:05Z

‘Here Are The Tulips’ by Hollow Hand.

Wish Road South by Hollow Hand

Taken from the upcoming album Wish Road South, out on Loose Music / Soundy in September.

Mad Shepherds

2026-06-03T16:00:38Z

With their celebration of ordinary people’s lives, Mackenzie Crook’s ‘Small Prophets’ and Little Toller’s recent reissue of L. P. Jacks’ ‘Mad Shepherds’ are a match made in heaven, writes Sue Brooks.

I have been a fan of the independent publisher, Little Toller, since it was launched in 2008. Looking out for favourite authors in the Monograph series — the small hardbacks that are so sweet to handle — and alongside them, the reissues of Classic Nature Writers in a stylish soft cover format. Great care is taken with the reissues, to match a painting or photo to the subject and select the person to write the introduction. Robert Macfarlane for Edward Thomas’s The South Country, Charles Rangeley-Wilson for H.E. Bates’s Down The River, Iain Sinclair for Richard Mabey’s The Unofficial Countryside, and so on.

I have nineteen Little Toller books to date, and many have become old friends. In the Spring of 2026, I heard about the one which would become the twentieth. Front cover painting by Samuel Palmer. Introduction by Mackenzie Crook. Author’s name L.P. Jacks. Title — Mad Shepherds.

Yes. It is Mackenzie Crook of TV fame, especially — if you like that sort of thing as much as I do — the Small Prophets series that came to an end in February. The timing was perfect, and, if I’m honest, the reason for the excitement about the book. Of L.P. Jacks I knew nothing, but trusted Little Toller’s judgement in such delicate matters.

Lawrence Pearsall Jacks (October 9th 1860 – February 17 1955) was a philosopher and well known speaker on both sides of the Atlantic at the end of the nineteenth century. Mad Shepherds was published in 1910 when he was living in a small village on Bredon Hill in the Cotswolds, feeling very much at home — a peasant among peasants. Getting to know the local people, meeting them in the pub, honoured to be trusted with their stories. Remarkable people: gifted, insightful, fiercely independent with a strong sense of moral purpose — philosophers in their own right. Snarley Bob is present on the first page in a pencil drawing by a contemporary artist. The angry, brooding face of a shepherd who was more at home with his sheep than any human, with the exception of a handful of men and one woman whom he revered. The extraordinary love and attention given to the individual qualities of each sheep created a breeding programme that made the local farmer Perryman rich and famous. Snarley Bob had no interest in reward other than the celestial guidance he received in the art of becoming a Good Shepherd.

Mystic communion with the stars, intense love of nightingales, slipping easily into what could be called “altered states” with a little alcohol; an implicit trust in his own knowing, not learned from books, but from direct experience. There are deeply moving passages leading up to the death of his friend, Shepherd Toller, recounted by L.P. Jacks in the voice of Snarley Bob’s wife which have an epic quality. Mesmerising as epics are meant to be.

Mackenzie Crook loves the larger-than-life characters and the reverential, unaffected way in which L. P. Jacks celebrates them, and laments the many millions of “ordinary” men’s and women’s stories that have been lost to the past. Exactly so. There is nothing “ordinary” about Snarley Bob, nor about Small Prophets‘ Michael Sleep who has captured the imagination of thousands this year. They seem to inhabit a parallel universe which we can enter freely. I go back to the book — the moment when I picked it up for the first time, and it settled so comfortably into my hands. The painting of a shepherd sleeping with his flock below a crescent moon — that visionary, mysterious evening landscape Samuel Palmer loved — and there it was again. An invitation and a promise.

Mad Shepherds — Small Prophets. A match made in heaven. Brought together in the fallow period when the TV series is waiting TO BE CONTINUED. Thank you Little Toller.

Published by Little Toller and with a new introduction by Mackenzie Crook, ‘Mad Shepherds’ by L. P. Jacks is out now and available here (£13.30).

Croft, Coast and Hill: Letters from the Northwest Highlands

2026-05-31T16:50:41Z

From unfurling green tips to cuckoos and nightjars, Spring reasserts itself on Kirsteen Bell and Annie Worsley’s respective crofts.

South Erradale, April 19^th

Dear Kirsteen,

How are you all? We’ve had such a cold wet start to April – lots of fast-moving vicious squalls of hail and snow mixed with much calmer but very dreich days. Do you still have snow on the hills? Our mountains are zebra-streaked but they were completely white for a long time.

I’m longing for spring. Seeing images of flowers, blossom and green leaves further south has made the yearning worse this year. (Perhaps it’s my age!) Although our fields are still bleached of colour, the heather brittle and trees bare, I love the anticipation of spring, waiting for signs – the first bee, a cuckoo returning home. I think it’s my favourite time of year, the one seasonal transition which, although it comes to us so late, arrives with powerful and distinct suddenness, probably because we’re so close to the sea, open to the elements and storms funnelling down the Minch. I’m thinking now of the geographies of your valley, loch and mountains. Do the hills and woods protect you and your croft from the worst weather?

It has been bitterly cold; spring seems so far away. But a few days ago, I spied my first heath violet next to the Seaweed Trail where it cuts across steep coastal moorland, a tiny purple light in all the pale grey. And then, on a single coltsfoot flower, a moss carder bee. Signs of spring at last. What do you look out for in Lochaber?

All the recent rain and snow melt raised water levels in the river so for a while we couldn’t check on our young woodland. Eventually R. managed to wade across. The trees were doing well, he said, covered with buds. In the smaller enclosure on this side of the river, I was horrified to find several little oaks had suffered damage. A few piles of droppings gave the game away. Somehow, deer had managed to get through a wind-damaged section of fence. Thankfully, each wee nibbled tree still had plenty of buds but for a while I was hot tempered and cross.

Kirsteen, this morning I woke to the sound of a cuckoo! For me, cuckoos are the signal – this first lone voice tells me spring has arrived. The wind dropped in the early hours, the dawn chorus rushed in through our bedroom window (always open no matter the weather), and to accompany the pan-piping, another surprise – the wild cherry by our front gate has erupted with white blossom. After breakfast I stepped out to breathe in the deep rich scent of bog myrtle and listen to the sound of the grand old tree bustling with bees. This explosive burgeoning of flower, leaf, hum and cuckoo-song is simply wonderful. And it is warm at last.

Annie x

Duisky, April 24th

Hi Annie,

We are fizzing with energy here! I always feel a bit mad in April. It’s the transition I think, as you say, the anticipation of full spring as it begins to reassert itself. There are green tips starting to unfurl from the purple birch buds while there’s still snow in the north wind. We are protected a little by the trees and the hills, though conversely that also means we get spring a fortnight after the sun-facing slopes over the loch.

It is the cuckoo I look for most too, it feels like a herald calling up through the land with light on its tail feathers. I think I heard your cuckoo this year. I usually expect our cuckoos around the 21^st of the month – that is, the birds that settle into the woods here for the season; however, I heard my first cuckoo on the 17^th, a solitary call, then all went quiet again. You wrote two days later so perhaps that’s how long it takes a cuckoo to fly from Lochaber to Wester Ross?!

The windows are always open here too. My husband and I have a bit of a window dance going on, where he wanders around shutting them and I sneak around behind him opening them again. It is at night I love it the most, cooried in under the blanket with a breeze on my face that more often than not carries the kwik and hoo of tawny owl pairs from the birchwood. I am positive I heard the squeakier clips of tawny chicks too, despite not being able to spy a nest.

The big annual highlight of the evening chorus is the nightjar. Only one, and only once, but what a star it is. I couldn’t figure it out, why I heard it just that single time and never again each year. That early cuckoo has finally made the connection for me. I guess the nightjar is another regular traveller across our croft, putting in a brief appearance before he moves on. As ground nesting birds they would be unlikely to stay; there have always been too many inquisitive dogs on the croft for the woodland to be safe territory.

I do remember my father-in-law coming in on April evenings to tell me he’d heard it. He didn’t call it a nightjar though, and I can’t for the life of me remember what he called it. I’ve searched for all the Scottish folk names for it, fern-oul, gait chaffer, pirrin bird. None spark any recognition when I replay them in my memory of his Highland lilt. It occurs to me now he was more likely to have used its Gaelic name, or some variation – when I look them up neither seem right either. Gobhar-oidche, night goat, cuidheall-mhor – I’m not sure of the direct translation. Big wheel? Big spinning wheel?

Annie, I’ve just gone down a YouTube rabbit-hole comparing the sound of a spinning wheel to the nightjar call, and sure enough, it is the same ticking whir.

I asked another writer friend recently how he approaches using simile and metaphor in his writing on nature, and he said that above all else he values accuracy, that poetics comes from attention. The Gaelic is a perfect example of that: cuidheall-mhor a perfect recreation of the echo our crofting predecessors would have heard. Single pane windows letting in the haunting modulating whir of the nightjar, yarn twisting through the wooden wheel and spinning bobbin resonating in reply from within.

Deer here too, as usual – the buggers have knocked down our hen coop, so the flock are currently enjoying extra free range until we get round to fixing the fence. Have the stags at least left you a pair of antlers in fair exchange for your sapling tops?

South Erradale, May 20th

Dear K. No antlers yet!

I love the idea of a cuckoo stopping off on your croft on its way here. Coming all the way from Africa via a grand tour of Europe with a pause for rest in Lochaber. Yes! Yesterday, I watched a hollering male flounce about, and then heard the snarling giggle of a female but couldn’t spot her. However, there are no owls; at least, we haven’t seen or heard any on our croft. A keen birder in nearby Opinan has filmed owls in his garden, so they are about. And no nightjars either. We hear snipe winnowing – I love their otherworldly haunting melodies out over the bog – and there are bats aplenty swooping round our heads as soon as we step out of the door, but I’ve never heard a nightjar here. What a magical moment it must have been. And the Gaelic names conjure up such mystery. I remember an old tale of nightjars stealing goat’s milk but didn’t know about the linguistic connection to spinning. I listened to a nightjar’s call online and yes, it does sound like a spinning wheel clicking and clacking. Is cuidheall-mhor – big (spinning) wheel – their song, and gobhar-oidche – night goat – their alarm call?

I must tell my friend – she has taken up spinning wool, encouraging local crofters to supply fleeces from their different breeds. She and other local women clean, card and spin the wool, and then knit jumpers as gifts in return. L. has become so skilled she has organised demonstrations of spinning for locals and tourists at the museum in Gairloch. I must ask if she or any of the other spinners have ever seen or heard a nightjar or know of its Gaelic associations to spinning wool.

The greening of our valley and local hills is underway – so many greens and all so bright – and a sudden outburst of wildflowers. Cuckoo flowers are much more plentiful this year. Are they known as gleòrann in Gaelic? There are several English names – Lady’s smock, mayflower, milkmaids, fairy flower. My mother always said they were associated with the fae and shouldn’t be picked. I wouldn’t dare and, in any case, they look so beautiful among the grasses, mosses and myrtle, pale pink flowers dancing in the wind accompanied by cuckoo-song. They are loved by butterflies too.

It’s not long now until the summer solstice. There is plenty of wild flowering to come – cotton grasses, red clover, yarrow, yellow rattle, orchids (especially the orchids) and many more. And the anticipation of our hay meadows in full sun, grasses nodding, insects humming, is almost too overwhelming, but I don’t want to wish the summer away before it’s begun. Every day is precious.

With love, A xx

Duisky, May 27th

Annie, look what I found: I had to send this nightjar by Alexi Francis to you, along with a wee wildflower and bird update from our own croft.

My morning alarm is redundant as it’s preceded by a chorale of willow warblers, wrens, blackbirds, great tits, blue tits, meadow pipits, siskins, and even redpolls. The top note of raven remains the most persistent in pulling me from sleep earlier each day (I might end up closing the windows after all to get a lie in.)

The birds themselves are mostly hidden now by the full leaved canopy. Staring long into the woods sometimes gifts a wee tree creeper scooting up an older sister birch. And every shaded slope, beneath all the green-gold hazel and shining birch leaves, are thousands of tiny purple bluebells. So many that their delicate scent rises over the damp earth and sweet leaves.

Some carry the whitened periwinkle tones of the Spanish bluebell, spearing tall into the spring light; other patches are the deep violet of common bluebell, nodding back down to the warming soil from their curved stems. Common bluebells made uncommon by their abundance. The teeming woods remind me why I pause on re-introducing livestock. Not just because the flowers are toxic to animals – why they’re left alone by the deer I suppose. Even if cows wouldn’t browse them, still they would trample them. Your descriptions of your hayfields are so enticing, and heavier hooves would create pockets of potential for new seeds, for more diversity in the understory, but – like your fae protected cuckoo flower – I am reluctant to break the spell the bluebells cast.

Have you read The Tree House by Kathleen Jamie? If not, I’ll send you a copy so you can read ‘Speirin’, the poem that lives in my heart all May. Speirin, seeking out. That’s what we do, isn’t it? Find these pockets of brilliance and life whose return is a revelation each year. Ach, let me just write out the poem for you, I can squeeze it in.

Binna feart, hinny,
yin day we’ll gang thegither
tae thae stourie
blaebellwids,
and loss wirsels –

see, I’d raither whummel a single oor
intae the blae o thae wee flo’ers
than live fur a’ eternity
in some cauld hivvin.

Wheesht, nou, till I spier o ye
Will ye haud wi me?

I almost risked the faeries’ wrath to press one purple bloom into this card. I can’t bring myself though to take them away from those light-flecked woods, to flatten those delicate papery curls. We’ll just need to gang thegither here next year.

With love,

Kirsteen Bell is a Scottish writer of narrative non-fiction and sometimes poetry. All her words are gathered from the croft in Lochaber where she lives, and the surrounding Scottish Highlands. Her writing and reviews can be found in such places as Paperboats, Caught by the River, The Guardian Country Diary, The Lochaber Times, and Northern Scotland Journal. Kirsteen can also be found at Moniack Mhor, Scotland’s Creative Writing Centre, where she is Projects Manager and Highland Book Prize Co-ordinator.

Annie Worsley is a writer, crofter, grandmother and geographer with an enduring love of the Scottish Highlands. In 2013 she and her husband moved to the crofting township of South Erradale near Gairloch. While her husband was a community pharmacist, Annie worked on Red River Croft. She began a blog about life on the croft and then wrote essays on nature and environment for various publications including Elementum Journal, Women on Nature, the Seasons’ Anthologies edited by Melissa Harrison, Caught by the River and Inkcap Journal. Her first book about life on Red River Croft and the natural history of Wester Ross, ‘Windswept: Life, Nature and Deep Time in the Scottish Highlands’, was published by William Collins in 2023, and is out now in paperback.

Nightjar illustration printed kind courtesy of Alexi Francis. See Alexi’s contributions to Caught by the River here.

‘Speirin’ printed kind courtesy of Kathleen Jamie, taken from ‘The Tree House’ (Picador Poetry, 2009). See more of Kathleen’s work on Caught by the River here.

Strangers on the Shore

2026-05-29T14:41:46Z

In ‘Strangers on the Shore’, published yesterday by White Rabbit Books, Michael Smith stumbles through the uncanny psychic landscape of Hastings, exploring the experience of becoming a father and the disarming grief of leaving your youth and its dreams behind. Will Burns reviews, finding a steadfast commitment to the beauty of doubt and ambiguity in the face of a vast and unknowable universe.

Of course it’s obvious to say a lot can happen in thirteen years — the amount of time that has elapsed since Michael Smith’s last book — but even so, a reckoning up of this specific time span, 2013 to 2026, certainly feels noteworthy. After all, a lot has happened. For the writer, TV presenter, flâneur, artist Michael Smith there has been what we might term the standard issue personal upheaval — the immense shock of fatherhood, the tumult of relocation from a London home that his particular brand of the artistic life can no longer afford, of the unanticipated downturn in one’s professional and creative circumstances — but in this new book, beautifully layered on top of all that, is the substantial weight of the whole country’s collective recent history. Strangers on the Shore positions the author’s existential dilemma across a backdrop of financial uncertainty in the wake of the 2008 crisis, the gentrification of East London, and then, with its inevitable creep, of seaside towns like the St Leonards he finds himself in, the Covid pandemic and its lasting impact and of the specific pressures, cultural, financial, social, afflicting regional English high streets up and down the land.

It’s all done with Smith’s trademark laconic and somewhat bemused flair, but perhaps with a welcome added note, now in middle-age, of palpably genuine anger as well as the usual wistful melancholy and ecstatic indulgence. Smith finds himself removed from a version of the capital that seems almost mythical to him at the time of writing — a place full of dreamers and their dreams, artistic ambition and the pleasures of its fulfilment, adventure, scope, infinite possibility. But it’s a place he visits now, up on the train from the ‘shambling seaside town’ he refers to as home, or, in his rather Lowry-ish line, as ‘this drinking town with a fishing problem’. In fact, Malcolm Lowry might well be an apt shadow figure for Smith’s book – though with a very contemporary kind of post-millennium artisan aesthetic (wine snobbery has never come off so self-effacingly winning as it does here) — there are, after all, the endless ambulations, the slightly cursed luck, the sense of the author, at a certain point in their life, finding themselves at the very edge of the world — though for Smith it’s a town both burdened and blessed with its faded Regency glamour ‘the end of the railway line’ and not a blighted shack on a Canadian inlet – cut off from their own past, their career, their selfhood. And of course there is the drink. Smith is excellent on the dichotomies of a true drinking life, especially those that come with the drudge of serving the stuff up to other drinkers. He’s fantastic on the heady euphoria of communion across the bar, as well as the grind and monotony of playing ‘mein host’. There is an eros for the grape on these pages that can practically be smelled and tasted. Almost every transcendent moment comes with a salutation in a wine glass and it’s this sensory, sensual intellect that allows Smith access to so much of the thinking he does across the geography of his poetic imagination and charmingly esoteric, open-hearted love of learning. And so we learn about the yarchagumba mushroom, an aphrodisiac and a stimulant, we learn about Tawus Melek, the Peacock Angel via the surprise discovery of a local ocakbaşi grill and the owner’s ‘heady Turkish red’. There are digressions into physics, mathematics, history, geography, and Aleister Crowley — even that excursion comes after Smith knocks over a book on the history of chocolate only to find a copy of a book about Crowley’s last days in Hastings that he had once owned and since lost to a drinking accident involving the author Gareth Rees.

Ambivalence of the sort Smith finds in the running of his bar, in his new life of exile and ecstasy, is a sort of battery for the whole book — the frustrations and profundity of new fatherhood, the eros for one’s past and the sheer power of the present, the loss of London and its simultaneous impossibility, the disappointments of thwarted ambition — ‘I used to be on TV!’ — and a newfound freedom from its own peculiar tyranny. Smith handles these multiple double-lenses with the kind of brutal honesty and self-awareness that allows for the quotidian and genuinely comedic gripes and moans of any middle-aged reckoning to find their mark, scattered as they are amongst mind-bending flights of fancy, wisdom and knowledge of every conceivable kind. Perhaps equivocation is the natural byproduct of an author who has made a kind of poetics of mystery, a home for himself in the uncertainty of being — a steadfast commitment to the beauty of doubt and ambiguity in the face of a vast and unknowable universe. Magic, no?

‘Strangers on the Shore’ is out now and available here, published by White Rabbit Books.

Peckerwood: Field notes from a feral’d garden

2026-05-28T15:29:26Z

Spring surges, squirming and unstoppable, into Mark Mattock‘s “feral’d” NW2 garden.

From Snow bush to May bush

‘God speaks in the least of creatures.’ – Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

The spectrogram at the top of my phone screen looks like a post of some giant artwork. A wild untamed Turner landscape in charcoal. It’s a visual rendition of the audio signals of this morning’s dawn chorus weirdly photocopied. Some ghostly fossilised echo of the garden from deep time, eons before bricks, concrete, sterile roses, creosote, EMFs and heavy particle pollutants. I’m learning to decipher it, I can see wren and house sparrow for approaching cat. They look like they’re bursting from an abstract expressionist depiction of blackcap’s thorn spinney. His dribbling song further annotated by the cold drizzle tapping on my face. A series of tall thick dark verticals follows like an unfurling of a ceremonial bonnet of black feathers — the caws of crow at the top of the big ash.

What’s he saying about me? This bird’s song is not calming. Very recent AI analysis of crow vocalisations reveals that crows have syntax, grammar, and talk about us, describe individuals of us to each other, can hate some of us; trashing our egocentric arrogance that complex language is unique to us. Suggesting — surely — that all birds do; all creatures, all life. Yet more recent science revealing plants also communicate in sound, scream when cut, chopped, pruned. Science like this makes total intuitive sense, feels instinctively right. What if we could hear a fresh-mown lawn? The horror.

Fifteen species have collaborated on this morning’s orchestral mural so far, in just fifteen minutes. But almost every morning Merlin (the identification app) suggests a bird that simply is not possible; or maybe just, an extremely remote chance, it’s the idea of it. In the last couple of weeks: cetti’s warbler, melodious warbler, meadow pipit, black redstart, kingfisher, redpoll. An app imagining an alternative ecosystem? I know what what it’s suggesting looks like. I doubted it hearing a song thrush, as it’s been claiming it has all week. I couldn’t hear it, couldn’t find it, searched the bare trees on my limited horizon with binoculars. This morning I have to take it back, there he is, on top of the big ash, bathed in red spectrum glow, on crow’s king twig; loud, bold, operatic, defiant.

I lean forward to check the phone beside my feet on the rust-scabbed garden chair again. Now at the top of the chart… a peregrine! I instantly flush with thrill, I know this is likely. It’ll be somewhere high up there. I’ve found them before when searching the sky for the first swifts. Classic raptor this time of the year; a male posing. I look for it through my floaters and the bleached-bone ash branches. It’s somewhere in the vast immaculate blue above them; above this garden, this street, this borough, this city. I rest my binoculars on my eye sockets, letting gravity help steady them, and scan the open sky — nothing. Then, in the mosaic of branch-broken sky, yes, there he is, pin-sharp in a soft-edged shard of it, the radiant peregrine. So high he’s a mere speck, no more than a glowing mote. I dwell a moment on how he probably can see the thames estuary and how suddenly small then that makes the world. Surely he’s too high to be heard? I move fractionally and lose him. I find him again minutes later, he’s descended a thousand or more feet. Transcendental, the thrush’s acoustic vocals now cinematically soundtracking the soaring falcon drawing circles in clean, pure, invisible wake across the empty urban Sunday airspace, purifying it with unadulterated wildness as he continues to spiral eastwards on the first thermals. Then the blackcap opens up, and now it’s truly beyond: a song thrush, blackcap mash, mix, duet that doesn’t really work but jeez! Mesmeric. The lucent lyrical clarity; every note, every phrase of each bird. So much to say.

In the waning luminance at the furthest reach of the outdoor wall light which I’d just switched on, two demonic spectral bipeds dancing face to face in some hallucinogenic trance. Skanking on thin satyric legs, eyes glowing, split wide sharp-tooth serrated gapes coughing spittle into each other’s mouths. The horny pogoing foxes too high to give shit about me. This usually goes on, nearly every night this time of the year, at the front of the house. They have a vulpine version of a crack house under a massive tarpaulin of bramble that was, long long ago, the front lawn. This bit of the project gone very wrong. It was intended as a massive bee success. I know dunnocks and long tailed tits had nested in it. It provided kilos of blackberries and the simple perverse joy of seeing the disgusted looks from passing nature-averse neighbours. But underneath in the rank subterranean sub-rubus gloom, on the bare hard fox-trodden ground, a growing fly tip of fox fancies and takeaways: grotesquely swollen disposable nappies like giant sea slugs, collections of premium cat food packaging, giant sore-coloured ox bones, soiled and scorched foils, assorted chewed plastic, ancient and recent.

A squirming knot of sickly spaghetti-coloured centipedes geophiliidae geophilus pinched tight in the beak of the robin bouncing around my boots. So close I can see the wave motions of the bristly-legged fringes as they writhe like vaselined elastic bands. The drastic total clearance of the bramble jungle has been ‘kerching’ for the pair. It looks like their second brood nest is somewhere in the neighbouring front garden, the first brood fledged a few weeks ago. They’ve been at my feet for the last few days snatching up countless small worms and assorted invertebrates — healthy soil. They seem to burst from out of the ground like trap-door spiders, on any prey I disturb or unearth, almost completely invisible until they move. The front garden now a miniaturised facsimile of devastation, a portion of clear felled, grubbed out amazon, or Congo. The privet hedge like the stark receding edge of the dense rainforest, the absolute boundary where the bulldozers stopped. From the neighbour’s it must look like the roadside buffer strips left by logging ‘operations.’ Inspired by the destroyed garden of a halted house renovation on the opposite side of the street, I’m going to leave it and allow. That garden bloomed spectacularly for a couple years. ‘Reweeded’ by itinerant wind travellers: an encampment of pink-dipped rosebay willowherb, giant piercing metallic thistles with fur crowns plucked by goldfinches, ragwort with its striped fruit of cinnabar moth larvae; dandelions, sow thistles, hawksbit. From dormant seed resurrected by disturbance and exposure to full spectrum photosynthetic light: poppies, ranunculus. The eternal camp followers: nettles, docks, forget-me-nots, oxeyes, grasses various, the scarlet pimpernel himself. It’s paved over now; there isn’t a single leaf, blade or blob of living green.

The foxes have expressed their contempt for my had-to-do-it by ‘venting’ scent markers all over the new space. To be expected though, all that bare earth for fox and feline must be like a row of portaloos at a festival. I was accusing an unidentified disgruntled neighbour of letting their dog on it until I saw the size of the dog fox one early morning playing chase with the reluctant vixen.

The intestinal larval routes of last year’s leaf miner moths stigmella aurella glow bleached white, raw red and magenta on some of the old hard dark green bramble leaves. They’re like tiny tapeworms shat from small birds, creating incredible intricate objet d’art with calligraphic depictions of a sacred river. There is something very satisfying about them. They remind me of yellowhammer eggs. The adult moths seem to favour the short puny single shoots of bramble scattered in the ground flora, I find few in the heap of slashed and grubbed-out canes I’m burning off in the fire pit.

It’s too much, I have to get up to close the window. Step into the glare of a cold-pocked metal full moon, resting weightless on the roofs. Notice the tiny emblematic ‘T’ stuck to the window as I count the scattering pin-pricks of stars. It’s a plume moth, Emmelina monodactyla. No one ever acknowledges the first moths of the year. From the cavernous shadow at the end of the garden, the creepy wailing and yelping of carnal frenzied foxes. They’re doing our heads in.

It took over a week for the magpies to complete their big stick dome nest. I watched the whole build. The site seemed to have been chosen by committee. The pair began soon after a gathering at the top of the ash — a whole clergy of zealot pied haggisters in black hoods.

I didn’t think it was going to work, they didn’t seem to be able to get it started, at first every stick bought in and placed dislodged a previous one. But over the days it became clear how intelligent the assiduous birds were. How they were clearly seeking particular sticks as the dome progressed, searching for the next bit to the 3D puzzle. I watched them testing strength and pliability of each stick. The way they juggled, particularly large long pieces, grappled with the neck-twisting weight to find the fulcrum (clearly showing corvids much more intelligent than dogs) before manoeuvring the selected piece through the canopy. They stole some of the finer twigs from the wood pigeon’s nest in Ivy Tower.

Outside, bright warm day, above us the female magpie is begging the male, relentlessly; wing fluttering like a needy chick with short grating calls of feigned hopelessness.
“What’s that about?” I’m asked.
In David Attenborough speak:
“It’s the female magpie pestering the male. Basically she’s saying feed me and fuck me, the nest is done, what are you waiting for?”.

Spring surges unstoppable like ocean tides; in waves, some barely discernible, but not today. Today is the seventh wave, crashing into the garden in spume and spray of light and heat, in wings, petals and leaves, in shrills and trills. An ethereal ménage a trois of whirling whites spirals combatively in the thermal rising from the heaving duvets of luscious greens, on which ladybirds shine like scattered drops of fresh spilt blood. I’m not in the city, I’m in a magical scene from Studio Ghibli. Blackbird warbles drunkenly. Flakes of sky — holly blues — flicker like wind-loosened birch leaves around alkanet and forget-me-not and are then wafted up Ivy Tower now tiled in polished pangolin scales of dark green radiating leaves. Droning hang-out-tongue hairy footed flower bees, carder bees, tree bees, early bees oscillate the warm, pollen-tainted air with soothing buzz and humming. Dropping down a scale, a confusing medley of narrow-waisted Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, ants, sawflies) fidgets, trembles, cruises, searches, tastes, prowls, soars, darts, pounces, floats through, over, under the kaleidoscope of leaf, blade, and flower head. Shamefully I can hardly name any, even those familiar.

The female orange tip drops out of the frenetic dance onto a garlic mustard leaf. As the male orange tip and ambitious male green-veined white continue to harass and body bump her she lifts her abdomen high towards them in a pheromonal butterfly fuck off, I don’t need you anymore.

For sure I know her, we met a year ago, either here in the garden or along a hedge. She would have then been a tiny ribbed millimetre-high orange rugby ball sat pert on a flower stem of garlic mustard. Hidden just below the cluster head of small blooms which I would have pinched off and put in a small plastic box to take her home, or indoors, with me. I can’t pass a patch of garlic mustard in April or May without looking for them — orange tip eggs. It’s a seasonal ritual, goes way back, has profound meaning, association — nostalgia, connection, healing. I would have regularly checked my boxes on the kitchen top. On seeing the egg had disappeared but knowing she was still there — now a near impossible to find micro caterpillar — I would have added a fresh mustard head with its developing seed pods. Orange tip larvae are cannibalistic, it’s why you only usually find one egg per flower head. Having carefully deposited an egg the female probably leaves a pheromone message that it’s been taken. I would have renewed the food plant every few days, until she turned green and near disappeared again, totally camouflaged, mimicking a swollen seed pod. Transferred her next to a whole plant stem in water, placed in a nylon netted cage with others, careful no plants touch, until some chemical, hormonal timer suggested she stops because it was time. I would have found her poised upside down like a tiny cobra, loose silk strapped to another stem or roof or side of the nylon cage. If incredibly lucky I would have watched her split open and squeeze from her old catsuit and warp and harden into a weird, legless little extraterrestrial’s boomerang. I would have placed her with the twenty or so others outside in a sheltered corner and all but forgotten her. Until a couple of weeks ago when there she was, losing patience with being jostled by the males she’d emerged with. They’re all dying to hit the new world after ten months in cryonic suspension, every cell in their bodies having been reconfigured. She remained poised, hanging from the roof netting. The familiar simple observation, moment, never wanes in monumental significance. It’s the same reaction to when, say, you’re shown the new dress she’s just put on for you before going out. The awe of metamorphosis, of unfathomable possibility, the constant of renewal.

The cat has just been swallowed into a heaving mound of lush fecund green, the narrow path now sunk deep into it leaving just a trace, like a karate chop in a lump of bread dough. He is snaking unseen under the dense foliage towards the amphibious-looking robin fledging perched uncharacteristically out in the open on the cherry stump like the garden idiot — a feathered toad with fluffy ear tufts and a stick-on tail flicking. Its parents, suspicious of jolting leaves, let off their rapid ‘tik, tik, tikking,’ hover over the greenery to distract the suspect apex predator. The fledgling launches out over the open garden, just managing to stay airborne, and disappears deep in the honeysuckle, the cat is still stalking, unaware it’s gone.

The sun re-emerges from the smeared cloud, and the contrast control is turned back to max. Brilliant rim-lit leaves burning hot flame green, hard shatterings of the blackest shade. The sun’s doppelgängernger on the kitchen window filling the shadows deep in the wall of vegetation where the concrete slabs end, over which a troupe of backlit dancing gnats scribble in some indecipherable script. New dock leafs pierce the knee-high canopy with pointed spear blades of neon chlorophyllic green. Under the glass-topped table, a fox scat looking like an unearthed hawkmoth pupa, bejewelled with a pair of metallic greenbottles. At the back the hawthorns have bloomed properly for the first time like the blackthorns a couple of months ago. With enough blossom to perfume the warm heady air with their familiar sweetened funk. Already some browning petals rain-splatted onto the ramsons, bluebells and dog’s mercury underneath. Melodious scrub warbler mutterings from somewhere in the ripe spinney. Two male orange tips on fire over the cow parsley. Immaculate dandelion afros stand proud in the glow, awaiting inevitable ruin. The first swifts scythe and surf heaven, screaming ‘we’re back.’ I don’t look up because I’ve just found the first orange tip egg and caterpillar — but I feel them, their piercing excited shrieks electrifying everything with tentative relief. This is what I envisioned all those years ago.

Mark Mattock. Artist. Photographer. Publisher. Rabbit Fighter. @the_rabbit_fighters_club

The Given World

2026-05-28T16:15:04Z

Melissa Harrison’s latest novel ‘The Given World’ is May Book of the Month. Amy Liptrot reviews — finding in the book’s generous worldview, rich language and dreamlike qualities an ‘Under Milk Wood’ for the twenty-first century.

‘What use, after all, is the past?’ asks one of the characters in the wonderful, multiperspectival portrait of a village, and by extension of contemporary rural England. It is Melissa Harrison’s fourth novel and her best, and it has been a great pleasure, over the last decade, to read a writer coming into her powers.

The fictional village of Lower Eodham sits beside the perfectly-named Welm river: ‘A green crease sunk into England since forever, a place as old as anywhere, water-formed and still shaped by the river with its springs and tributaries and long-forgotten wells…’

The opening chapter sees postie Saj delivering to houses around the village, an effective device which harks to Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood. It is not just in this regard but in its rich language and dreamlike qualities, conveying inner lives of a community, that The Given World is comparable to Under Milk Wood, but for the twenty-first century. This is a countryside of solar farms and Yodel vans, of schoolhouses converted to holiday homes, of hedges being replanted after being taken up. It doesn’t dodge the realities of rural life, authentic and deeply observed. We meet Paul in his combine cab: ‘For god’s sake, he thinks: they want strawberries in March, they want tomatoes year round and bloody blueberries on the muesli, but they don’t want Beaumont to irrigate his greenhouses’.

Each chapter broadly follows one different character in close third person that with great skill conveys their voices, rhytmns and concerns yet is occasionally able to see into the future with goosebump-giving effect. We meet characters at unexpected places, before or after the drama: after the affair, when their house is finished — and everyone has secret depths, from the agricultural worker who is a secret vapour wave artist to the old lady with a rich artistic past.

In this way a generous worldview builds, where nothing is just one thing, like how ‘churches used to be full of all sorts of interesting things, you’d be surprised: green women, witchmarks, dragons, mermaids, woodwoses.’

There are wonderful pieces of writing, including a description of a countryside supplies shop, of a really good night out, of driving a Porsche, and of a household attending someone’s death. A central set piece is Hilda lying in a hollow after a fall, thinking back over her life as night falls and animals emerge. It is full of perfect, telling details and subtle moments that reveal themselves on re-rereading: the estate agent’s clients, ‘their eyes slipping past her even as she introduced herself’, or the lover careful of an HRT patch.

Each chapter starts with something going on in the natural world, choosing elements that convey the beauty and brutality of the non-human world with detail and accuracy. In late summer, the mists of dawn rise, a blind fawn hides and a caterpillar: ‘Lit by chance from the sun, like a trapeze artist in a followspot, her body forms a C-shape, then an I, and then another hieroglyph, impossible to ascertain’. Harrison has developed a distinctive blend of the specific and the strange. Moments of mysticism and magic are earned and appropriate. Builder Roy replaces superstitious totems found in old roofs. An ancient spring reappears.

One character thinks: ‘there isn’t one big story that everyone’s part of: everyone’s all up in their own separate realties, everyone’s a main character. It’s just that the stories touch up against each other sometimes’. While the book does a brilliant job of converting these separate realities, it also shows that there is one big story created by the place and its history. The past, it seems to suggest, is something that can unify and inform if we are willing to look and listen. The people are going through different things but they are in many ways connected, especially by the environment and the spectre of ecosystem collapse, of drought and flood, and by a growing unease. Towards the end, plants are not growing and the Welm rises.

Dreamy yet real, careful and full of care, The Given World is a masterclass in contemporary fiction. I thought it was excellent from sweeping start to spine-tingling end.

Melissa Harrison’s ‘The Given World’ is out now and available here, published by Hutchinson Heinemann. Read an extract from the book here. Read an interview with Melissa here.

Cartographies of Care

2026-05-25T11:02:00Z

Opened yesterday at Southcombe Barn, Widecombe-in-the Moor, Dartmoor, Cartographies of Care is a group exhibition that asks — in the current contexts of warfare and rising sea levels crises — ‘how much longer will we have these lands to care for?’

_{Vivian Ross-Smith, Refinishing, 2025, still from performance film part of their ongoing dyke project © Vivian Ross-Smith}

Through the work of ten UK based and international artist-women and non-binary artists, the exhibition explores gender and ecology through their everyday and peripheral encounters with land and landscape. The majority of works are displayed in the gardens of Southcombe Barn which includes six acres of flower meadows on rural Dartmoor, which itself has a rich history of land-focused art. The exhibition will also coincide with the National Garden Scheme in June when Southcombe gardens will be open to the general public. The ten artists invite viewers to consider how landscapes might be held by humans rather than mastered, and how art can cultivate forms of ecological relation rooted in attentiveness rather than assertion. While ‘land art’ can have a reputation for epic interventions, the work in Cartographies of Care offers the opportunity for a smaller scale, more intimate conversation with the land. The exhibition is curated and presented by Cassinelli Mills, an organisation committed to creating living legacies for contemporary artist-women and non-binary artists past, present and future.

_{Rebecca Chesney, Water Lines (New York), 2023, hand embroidery on antique map © Rebecca Chesney}

The exhibition links together multifaceted practices offering expanded conversations in women’s experiences of, relationships with, and approaches to, land. Rebecca Chesney, Iman Datoo, and Arabel Lebrusan engage land as a politicised and contested site, foregrounding how ecology is entangled with power, extraction, and social histories through research-led and site-responsive approaches. Susanna Bauer, Edie Evans, and Laura Hopes focus on issues of care, repair, and reuse, working intimately with found and foraged materials to explore themes such as fragility and craft traditions. The practices of SHARP, Lucia Pizzani, Vivian Ross-Smith, and Alice Hackney offer embodied narratives told through ancestral and personal histories and situated experiences.

_{Rebecca Chesney, Future Landscapes, 2020 (one of fourteen), © Rebecca Chesney. Photo Credit Alexander Christie}

Through such intimate acts of walking, gathering, tending, storytelling, drawing, research, craft practices and speculative and deep mapping, these artists produce alternative geographies placing land and art through feminist, decolonial and ecological lenses that centre the ‘margins’ rather than the monument. Care becomes both method and politics: a way of knowing land through sustained attention and responsibility, mapping obscured experiences with land, in place of dominance and destruction over vast terrains. Alice Hackney’s specially made map/artwork alongside a newly commissioned exhibition text by Prof. Vron Ware guides the visitor through the exhibition internally and externally so that the very nature of viewing the exhibition becomes an artistic act in itself.

_{Susanna Bauer, Becoming (No.3) (detail), 2026, magnolia leaf, cotton thread © Susanna Bauer}

By positioning care as a cartographic practice, the exhibition challenges dominant spatial histories and foregrounds intimate practices we have with the land. Cartographies of Care offers landscapes not as monumental conquests, but as relational fields shaped by bodies, memory and lived experience. Cartographies of Care takes place in partnership with KARST, coinciding with Lucia Pizzani: Faunal Succession, a solo exhibition touring to Focal Point and Mostyn.

Cartographies of Care is open until Sunday 7th June, Thurs – Sun, 10.30am – 3pm, and is free to attend. More information here.

Now Playing

2026-05-24T08:00:51Z

‘Wild Geese Arrive’ by Hannah Peel & Beibei Wang.

The Endless Dance by Hannah Peel

Taken from the collaborative album The Endless Dance, out now on Real World Records.

Tomorrow Might as Well be Today

2026-05-22T16:30:23Z

A story extracted from Roy’s ‘Boomerang Process’.

Barbara is doing that thing she does. She doesn’t overdo it. It’d lose its impact if she did. She’s not soft, Barbara. Knows when to lull people in and hit them where it hurts.

“Y’know what’s her face from The Eldonians?”

Pat has been reeled in.

“Who do you mean, Barb?”

“If I knew that, I’d tell you, wouldn’t I?”

Pat is not amused. And it shows.

“I’m only asking.”

Barbara feels victorious. Not only has she pissed Pat off, she’s stitched Chrissy up as well, without even mentioning her. Chrissy is the woman Barbara is claiming to have forgotten the name of. Barb knows that Pat will go telling tales, when she finally clicks who she’s on about, and Chrissy will attempt to retaliate by doubling down and responding with something like:

“Barbara who?’ Or ‘Which Barbara?”

It’ll be too late then though. Futile. Like the kid in the playground who gets called a knobhead and tries to overcome it with ‘You are!’

The damage has been done. One nil Barbara. When in doubt, just pretend to forget someone’s name. It subtly shows how much contempt you have for them, whilst simultaneously demonstrating how irrelevant and unimportant they are to you. It’s never failed for Barb. She doesn’t even realise she’s doing it half the time. Both women are perched on the uncomfortable, hard, yellow seats at the bus stop at the top of Lord Street. Swarms of people fly by. Mostly workers from nearby offices, darting into Tesco for a meal deal. Tourists looking for The Beatles Museum or the LFC shop before they board the open-top bus tour for a cruise around the city’s sights. Barbara smokes, to the annoyance of fellow bus stoppers, while Pat gives a young homeless girl a handful of slummy.

“It’s awful that, Barb. She can’t be much older than our Ellie.”

“I’ve told you about giving them money, haven’t I? Most of them aren’t even homeless y’know?”

Pat’s not arsed. And isn’t really listening. She’s wondering what that girl’s story is. She looks about fifteen.

“And they’ll only buy drugs with it anyway.”

Pat’s not biting this time. Barbara is fully aware of the situation around Pat’s own daughter and her having to bring her grandkids up as her own. Thinking before she speaks isn’t a quality Barb seems to possess, though, so Pat just indulges her until she moves on to the next subject.

“They should sterilise them. It’s not fair on the kids.”

Pat’s thoughts are never far away from her daughter, Kelly. Kelly is currently halfway through a six-month sentence at HMP Style. Shoplifting. Again. Barbara knows all of this. Even if she has unwittingly put her foot in it, she won’t apologise. A couple of years ago, after spending a Sunday afternoon on the ale in The Rose & Crown on Cheapside, Pat found the courage to stand up to Barbara, albeit gin-fuelled. Barbara had made another one of her snide remarks, something about having a load of old clothes that her grandkids don’t need as they were too old and wrecked, so asked if Pat wanted them. Pat finally snapped after years of getting her head pecked. Took this as an insult, faux concern, aimed at her for being the mother of a heroin addict. Called out Barbara for everything, all the hypocrites under the sun. Told her if she was that bothered about the devastation that drugs caused, then she should look a bit closer to home. She didn’t say any more. She didn’t have to. Everyone in there knew what she was going on about. Barbara went berserk.

“Our Brian is a property developer. He works hard for his money. Something your Kelly would know fuck all about.”

They had to be separated by one of the locals. They’re both pushing seventy and were looking on having a straightener. It’s never been mentioned since. Erased from the annals of history. Thou shall not mention Brian’s finances. So, they didn’t. Ever again.

“How long have you been waiting love, has the seventeen been?”

Barbara inhales her ciggy and completely ignores the lad who has made the query.

“It’s due any minute, lad.”

Pat’s rescued the poor fella after Barb left him hanging. He still looks aghast that someone could be so blatantly rude. He nods to Pat then cocks his head towards Barbara in a ‘What the fuck’s up with her’ fashion. Pat smiles awkwardly. Barbara, oblivious to it all, takes a few paces towards the bin, stubs her ciggy out before lashing it in. She swaps her green and white John Lewis bag’s back over for these new Marks and Spencer bags that are made from paper, as they were starting to cut into the fingers on her weaker hand. A couple of Chinese student girls take refuge at the bus stop. They laugh and converse in their native tongue. They’re both kitted out in expensive-looking outfits and adorned with even more expensive-looking bags from Seven Store. One of them extracts a vape from an outside zip pocket on her rucksack. It’s quite an imposing object. Barbara, predictably, is not amused.

“They should be speaking English if they’re going to live here. They could be saying anything. It’s not on”.

Barbara’s son bought her a place in Greece. She waltzes off there whenever she feels like. Hasn’t picked up a single word of Greek in all that time. She’s on holiday there, so doesn’t see why she should. Pat just smiles at the girls apologetically and inwardly seethes at Barbara.

It’s a complicated friendship. They’ve known each other since 1984, when they both moved into new-build houses next door to each other. They remain there to this day. Everyone else has been and gone. Barbara could move if she wanted to. The house is her last connection to her husband, who passed away during one of the lockdowns, so she’s unlikely to ever leave, despite her son’s offerings. Pat has often considered moving. The fear always gets her in the end though. New bus routes, grandkids would be too far away from their mates, not knowing anyone around there. One of her old neighbours, Ann, moved to Wavertree a few years ago, and is always messaging her on Facebook about how much better it is. Maybe one day? If Kelly ever got clean. Regardless of where they live, these two seem most likely to argue themselves into a corner, any corner, and call that home. Nothing big has ever really gone on between them; it’s more the stuff that doesn’t happen, though, rather than what does. They might be confusing ‘being friends’ with ‘known each other for a long time.’

The seventeen bus finally arrives. They manage to get two seats at the front, after Pat uncharacteristically uses some passive aggression on a middle-aged fella who was sat there with a big holdall next to him.

“I’ll tell you where it all went wrong, Pat.”

“Where what went wrong?”

“Everything.”

“Like what?”

“It was the smoking ban.”

“What was?”

“When people started going mad.”

“How do you mean?”

“Think about it. When was it, about 2007? You never heard of anyone really going mad before that, did you? Losing the plot.”

“What about that family who lived at the bottom of our street for a bit? The son battered them all with a hammer. You could smoke to your heart’s content then.”

“Yeah, but they were mad anyway. Very strange. God knows what went on behind closed doors. Always knew they weren’t fully there. There are always exceptions to the rule. No need to get funny.”

“I’m just saying.”

“People don’t like having their choice taken away from them. There should be smoking and non-smoking pubs. Same with restaurants. And buses. It’s ridiculous.”

“Oh, I don’t know, they’re just trying to encourage people to live healthier and longer.”

“Well, it hasn’t worked, has it? People are on edge. It’s not as if anyone’s stopped smoking because of it. They just stay home and smoke more. Don’t even get me started on those vapes. Pointless.”

Pat resists the urge to let out a huge sigh. It seems like a metaphor for her whole life. She’s always feeling the need to be taking care of somebody else, which means there’s never any room for her.

“I might start smoking myself.”

Barbara rolls her eyes then grabs a handrail as she attempts to keep her balance whilst trying to open a window.

“See what I mean? It’s chaotic. We’d be upstairs having a ciggy now.”

“It’s a single-decker, though.”

“Exactly! Nobody noticed that they done away with double-decker buses when that smoking ban come in.”

“I was on one the other day. The eighty-six.”

“What were you doing on that? That’s the south-end, isn’t it?”

“Women’s hospital.”

“Why?”

“Just a check-up.”

“You never said.”

“Didn’t know I had to.”

“I don’t know what’s got into you, wanting to argue the toss about everything these days.”

“I’m only saying.”

A silence follows. It’s comfortable for both. The bus chugs along steadily. Once they’re out of the traffic of town, it’s plain sailing towards Anfield. The journey gets put on hold at the first stop on Everton Road. No one gets on or off at the bus stop. After a few minutes, Barbara goes to see the driver, who’s wearing oversized, mirrored sunglasses, despite the clouds.

“What’s going on here, love?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why are we stuck here? I’ve got frozen stuff in my bags…are you going to refund me if it defrosts?”

“We’re early. Got to stick to the schedule. People complain if we’re early. They complain if we’re late. Don’t worry, we’ll get moving in four minutes.”

“Not my problem. If this ice cream melts, are you going to tell my nieces that there’s nothing in for dessert tonight?

“Have a seat. As I say, we’ll get going soon.”

“Pat, come on, we’re getting off. This idiot doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

As usual, what Barbara thinks is happening and what is actually happening are two very different things. She starts fussing around with all her bags. An Asian man offers to help. She rejects him. Pat remains seated.

“Come on, Pat. Let’s go. We’re being taken for fools.”

Some passengers are starting to look. Most of them look away. One of them chips in.

“Come ‘ead drive, I’m trying to get to work here.”

The driver feels protected behind his sunglasses. He ignores the fella. Pat remains in her seat. Barbara is getting herself worked up, trying to get to grips with all her bags. Pat shakes her head. Barbara catches her.

“Never mind shaking your head. If you would’ve got up when I told you to, we would’ve been on the next bus by now. I’ve had enough. I need a ciggy.”

Pat’s being pulled in both directions. Part of her wants to just get off and avoid any more fuss. Another part of her wants to tell Barbara to fuck right off. To tell her that she won’t be taking anymore of her nonsense. That she won’t be listening to her moaning and whinging for another second. That she’s fucking sick of being talked down to and treated like shit. To ask what she brings to the table other than gossiping and acting like a victim in every situation. That it’s better off if they don’t bother with each other ever again…but she can’t, can she? They live next door to each other. It’d be more trouble than it’s worth. So, Pat slowly lifts herself up. Barbara can barely conceal her delight.

“About time.”

The doors of the bus are still open. Barbara lowers herself down onto the pavement. Pat is right behind her. Her and the driver exchange a look. Pat takes it to mean that she doesn’t have to put up with all this. It’s exactly what the driver is trying to convey. He knows. The second Pat has both feet on the pavement, the doors shut, and the bus slowly moves away. Barbara is not amused.

“Can you believe him?”

“Believe what?”

“Him. What’s his problem?”

Pat feels a bit faint. Dizzy. She watches Barbara tear the cellophane off a fresh pack of ciggies.

“I told you, didn’t I? People are frightened of their own shadows since that smoking ban. That driver was terrified because he was early. I’ve heard it all now.”

“No one was arsed, Barbara. Apart from you.”

“That fella was going to be late for work. What if he gets sacked?”

“He wasn’t arsed, Barbara. He recognised you as Brian’s mum and just wanted…”

“Don’t you bring our Brian into this!”

Barbara is struggling to get a flame out of her lighter.

“I’m just saying.”

“What are you saying, Pat?”

“Nothing.”

“Is there something you want to say to me?”

This is it. Now is the time. Pat’s big chance.

“No, there isn’t.”

“Thought not.”

Pat’s chest feels tight, and her throat feels dry. She’s pissed off with herself for backing down again.

“Actually, yes, I have.”

“Let’s hear it then.”

“I just think you’re a lonely, bitter old woman, who’s going to die a very sad, miserable death.”

Barbara looks like she’s been punched in the soul. Twice. She tries to react but can’t. So, Pat continues…

“I’m all you’ve got. You act like you’re the only person who’s ever had their husband die. You treat people terribly. You’re cruel. Always looking down on people. It’s not on. Nobody bothers with you. They’re pissed off with your snide remarks. I can’t avoid you because you live next door. I’ve sneaked out the back a few times just to get a bit of peace. I’ve had enough. I’m not putting up with it anymore. Always talking about everybody else. People aren’t stupid, Barbara, they’re sick of you, just like I have been for the past 40 years. Well, that’s it now. I’ve said what I’ve said.”

Barbara finally lights her ciggy. She takes a long drag on it, then exhales out of the side of her mouth. The sun is starting the sneak through the clouds. Traffic is building up due to a learner driver stalling in the road right next to her. A young lad in a pick-up truck is getting irate. Barbara shakes her head at him, then turns to Pat.

“I think I’m going to give up smoking after this packet.”

“We’ll see.”

“Yeah, we will.”

The next bus is due in 6 minutes. Two young girls sit at the bus stop. Must be about twelve. They are watching a music video on one of their phones. Someone has graffiti-ed over the bus timetable, in thick black marker, the words READERS’ WIVES MATTER. Two fellas trudge their way towards town, on the other side of the road. They look like they’re walking fast but are actually moving slowly. One is glugging from a black-and-gold can. The other is wearing a beret. A Black woman in her thirties arrives at the bus stop. She is wearing gym clothes and pushing an old pensioner-style shopping trolley. Barbara looks her up and down. The two girls are laughing at whatever is on the screen. A group of young lads run towards Everton hills, sporting a boxing glove logo on their t-shirts. Some kind of cycling collective head towards the bus stop, holding cars up on the other side of the road. A grey-haired fella appears to be their leader. He has a speaker strapped to his bike. Loser by Beck blasts out. The two girls look up from their phones to wave at all the cyclists. A red-haired fella in a brightly coloured tracksuit shouts SHORTS WEATHER! to nobody in particular. The girls respond by shouting YES, THE BOYS in unison. The woman with the trolley wishes she had a bike. Then they’re all gone. The Fourteen bus turns up. The driver is wearing wrap-around shades. The kids and trolley woman get on it. Barbara lights another ciggy.

PJ Smith is a Liverpudlian author and spoken word artist, better known as simply Roy. ‘Boomerang Process’ is Roy’s second collection of compulsively intense, hilarious, terrifying, spectral and vital stories wired from the margins of Liverpool. It is newly published by — available exclusively from — TNC Books.

Post-Elmley photos and thank-yous

2026-05-21T17:31:23Z

Thank you, from the bottom of our marshy hearts, to everyone who made last weekend at Elmley Nature Reserve one for the books. Thank you particularly to Grace Spooner, Emma Warren, Mathew Clayton, Rosa Amora, Riley Summer, Rob St John & Wil Troup, variously, for your cool heads, comradeship and organisational prowess.

Thank you to all the artists who made time in their schedules to cross the water with us.

Thank you to all the campers, birdwatchers, workshop-goers, listeners and owl-walk participants…

Thank you to the marsh harriers, lawping, curlew, oystercatchers, swallows, yellow wagtail, bittern…

And thank you to Neil Thomson and Jess Bootes for catching it all on camera.

Photos 1, 2, 4, 5, 12, 14, 16, 19 & 25 by Jess Bootes

Photos 3, 6-11, 13, 15, 17, 18 & 20-24 by Neil Thomson

Loyalty to The Given World: Melissa Harrison, interviewed

2026-05-20T12:39:35Z

May’s Book of the Month is Melissa Harrison’s ‘The Given World’, newly published by Hutchinson Heinemann. In this month’s author interview, Melissa speaks to CBTR’s Tallulah Brennan about imagined rivers, our skewed relationship with the seasons, and the notable omission of farming from the nature writing canon.

Find an extract from the interview below.

_{Photo: Richard Allenby-Pratt}

Some quick-fire questions to start us off.

Firstly, I’m really interested in how fictional your characters are within the village. Did they emerge purely from imagination? They seem very believable!

Thank you! They did. I find characters easy to create: often I’ll start with a glimpse of clothing, or a gesture, a nickname, or a turn of phrase, and the rest coheres quickly around that starting point. Once they’ve stepped into the book and begun to speak I rarely have to change anything about them. Very occasionally there’ll be a character who I can’t see or hear clearly, and then I have to consciously ‘make them up’, which feels like doing work rather than just encountering them. There were a couple of those in the first draft of this book, but they didn’t make the final cut.

Was it important to not assign this village to a real place? I’m interested in whether there’s a reason you chose not to make it ‘placeable’ or mappable and therefore recognisable?

Very much so. None of my novels are set in a defined location; I need enough wriggle room to let my imagination work freely without the feeling that someone might write to tell me I’ve ‘got something wrong’. There are a couple of locations in The Given World that were inspired by real places near my home, but given that there’s a steep hill in the Welm Valley, stone houses, and dairy farming, it’s definitely not set in Suffolk. I also really love world-building: coming up with my own names for rivers and places. It’s one of the most satisfying parts of my job.

I’m really interested in how you consider our skewed relationship with the changing seasons in the book. One of the passages I immediately underlined involves your character, Angela, who is dismayed that her daughter doesn’t understand that the cherry blossom she is telling her about will be gone by the time she comes to visit. She realises that ‘her daughter hasn’t yet understood how fleeting things were, that cherry blossom and blackbirds singing weren’t a constant backdrop but a clock that counted you through your life’. Why does it matter to you to build characters so devoted to careful attention? Or, maybe as importantly, so alarmed by a lack of it.

I suppose you could say that trying to inspire that kind of attention is my life’s work. I think it matters, for all sorts of reasons: it can improve your mental health and wellbeing, sure, and it’s also the first step in inspiring people to care for the natural world. But that’s to instrumentalise it. Understanding seasonality and temporality are ways in which we can come to terms with mortality, which is something I think our Western society and values permits and even encourages us to fail at – with pretty catastrophic results, both for ourselves and the planet. The world is beautiful, fragile, and mortal, and pretending that isn’t the case allows us to commit all sorts of depredations. Attending to the fleetingness of the world around us can be painful, but it’s the very least of the labour that we owe to it, and builds a foundation for more.

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Melissa Harrison’s ‘The Given World’ is out now and available here, published by Hutchinson Heinemann. Read an extract from the book here.

Up All Night

2026-05-18T09:57:59Z

Newly published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Imogen Willetts’ ‘Up All Night: A History of Going Out’ is the story of the good times and the great ones. Emma Warren reviews.

History shows us that going out goes in waves. For years it might be at high tide, with a wide array of activity taking place after dusk. And then gradually, or all at once, the night world can go dark. Sometimes this takes place on a national level, for example when war breaks out, or authoritarian rule arrives, but going out can also recede on a personal level: during illness, bereavement, or simply through aging.

Imogen Willetts’ Up All Night tracks a long arc of big nights out by selecting a chronological series of maximally creative highpoints, across the centuries and from across the world. Her stated intention is to reconstruct a series of notable nightlife moments, and to make them accessible to readers through deeply researched storytelling. Her authorial ability to spark connection to collective nightlife feels especially relevant today.

We’re not short of reports showing that UK pubs, clubs and public space in general are in sharp decline (community-owned pubs being a rare upwards line on the graph). Covid broke the chain that led youngsters through grassroots spaces into nightlife for grown folks, and the government’s new National Youth Strategy reported that half of fifteen-year-olds in England spend most of their free time in their bedrooms.

The nightlife tide is demonstrably low, here and in many other comparable places worldwide. Willetts’ jaunty, jam-packed and dynamic history contains plenty of evidence to suggest that this might be temporary because low points are an essential part of her story, with new and energetic waves following enforced quietness. Just as a couple of examples, this rollercoaster ride through time and space includes mafia-run casinos and cabarets in LA and Havana that followed World War II, and the Mutoid Waste Company’s industrial techno raves that flourished after the Berlin Wall came down.

In Up All Night, nightlife relates to ‘commercial and secular environments, designed to offer a variety of pleasures at night’. Variety is the key word here because in Willetts’ world, ‘going out’ extends far beyond the dancefloor. She does spend time in jazz dives, discos and nightclubs, for example NYC’s Studio 54 or Berlin’s Berghain. But this is a history which revels in spectacle and theatricality, happiest when bringing the reader into spaces that have been transformed by imaginative special effects. It’s less ‘a red, light, a basement and a feeling’ as articulated by US house DJ Kerri Chandler – and latterly by our very own Luke Unabomber – and more Punch Drunk through the ages.

She is a sparky guide, and accordingly, starts in an unexpected location: Yoshiwara, 17^th century Japan, a ‘flashy pleasure quarter on the outskirts of the shōgun’s wooden canal city’ designed by the shōgunate. Bathed in red lanterns and year-round cherry blossom, it offered entertainment, acrobats, food, courtship and paid-for sex. Yoshiwara offers a unique starting point which allows Willetts to articulate another of the questions that propel her thesis: that nightlife also illustrates the workings of society. In reconstituting nightlife she’s able to explain the surrounding picture: that Japan had a strict four-layer class system and that one socially low-ranking group – merchants – ended up with huge wealth (‘the tech billionaires of their time’), with Yoshiwara as a state response to this particular aspect of social change.

Despite outlining a lost world, this chapter, like many others, contains details which chime with the present. Her description of the guards in a watchtower, logging every arrival and departure to Yoshiwara reminds me of today’s ‘No ID, No Entry’ rules. The requirement to show identification is clearly not about checking people’s ages, because even individuals who are clearly over 25 – double that age, even – have to show their driving licence or passport to get past the bouncers. It’s about logging arrivals and departures, just as in ancient Japan.

As an author, Willetts is drawn to the visual, and not just in the Van Gogh quote selected for the epigraph. We meet hard-drinking Parisian art students in 1890s Montmartre whose takeover of the newly built Moulin Rouge included specially commissioned paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec; costumed fawns, Egyptian mummies and gladiators; and dancers erupting from human-sized eggs: ‘somewhere between a party from the TV show Skins and a night at the museum’.

Willetts’ clear enjoyment of spectacle makes sense. She’s a university lecturer specialising in cultural and urban history, and before writing this book, worked at the Royal Academy of the Arts where she developed their popular Lates series creating large-scale installations and performance. One of these, in 2019, was inspired by the 18^th Century Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens where thousands of Londoners would gather at night to walk down tree-lined boulevards, listen to musicians mimicking birdsong in gooseberry hedges, dine al fresco, or attend balls on a site the size of twelve football pitches.

The depth of her knowledge shines through in this chapter, for example when we read about English painter and satirist Hogarth suspending coloured oil lamps from trees in this dolled-up park, creating a ‘trippy, glittering phantasmagoria’, long before the arrival of electricity. Or when we learn that this new form of mass entertainment travelled, with a version of Vauxhall Gardens built in Russia. The country’s first railway line was constructed to take passengers from St Petersburg to Pavlosk where it was sited. The association between trains and the pleasure gardens became so intertwined, she writes, that the Russian word for station is still vokzál.

Before ending in noughties LA, with tabloid photographers chasing reality TV stars into waiting taxis, Willetts squeezes in a huge array of stories. Her explorations into going out make the deep past accessible as she criss-crosses Europe, North America, Cuba and Shanghai. Millionaires, mafia and aristo-celebrities appear repeatedly, along with occasional turns from upstart radicals, particularly in the final quarter of the book – whether they’re Belgrade techno DJs or LA punks at The Masque, a venue memorably described as ‘heaven and hell rolled into one’.

Willetts asserts that nightlife has barely changed since 1995, but I’d be inclined to disagree. One street-up example would be the grimy jazz jams that emerged in mid-2010s London, with live musicians having an energetic effect on packed dancefloors, and which have since spread across the UK and abroad. In the main, though, Willetts has created a compelling alternative history of nightlife; positioning it as the maximally inventive wing of the creative industries.

Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ‘Up All Night: A History of Going Out’ by Imogen Willetts is out now and available here (£23.75).

Emma Warren’s latest book ‘Up the Youth Club: A Love Letter’ (Faber) is out in paperback in July.

Final Timings & Travel Information: CBTR Weekend at Elmley Nature Reserve

2026-05-14T22:39:17Z

Our event at Elmley Nature Reserve is just around the corner, kicking off tomorrow. Although on-site accommodation has sold out, there are a few day and weekend tickets still available, with affordable alternative places to stay accessible by car or taxi. Nearby Sittingbourne has a Travelodge, Premier Inn and Holiday Inn, with a number of B&B, rental and camping options situated on the Isle of Sheppey itself. Off-grid Clifftop Camping, situated approximately 20 mins from the event site, looks to be a particularly lovely (and pocket friendly!) option. You can find a list of Sheppey taxi firms below to arrange transport to and from the site, as well as information about catching our free electric shuttle bus, plus directions of how to reach the site by car.

We’re so excited to be embarking on this weekend of arts / nature / culture in amongst the incredible richness of Elmley’s flora and fauna.

A few plans and timings have been modified since our last update, so please refer to the below for most up-to-date (and final) information.

You can find a site map at the bottom of this post.

FRIDAY 15TH MAY

From 17:00
Caught by the River DJs ease us into the weekend with a selection of nature-adjacent tunes and field recordings. A chilled backdrop to getting your bearings, catching up with pals and taking a deep breath out. Drift in and out of the barn as you please.

19:00
French/British alt-pop singer songwriter Clémentine March takes to the stage, playing tracks from her just-released third album Powder Keg (PRAH Recordings). Influenced by Brazilian music, indie rock and Robert Wyatt, her music draws a map between the regions of the world where she’s lived.

20:30
Confronting thoughts about collectivism, our relationship with the natural world and the weight of consciousness with directness and purpose, esteemed 4-piece Modern Nature play songs from 2025’s critically acclaimed The Heat Warps.

21:30
Caught by the River DJs & friends (including Clémentine March) play the night out with more tunes to vibe, unwind and bliss out to.

SATURDAY 16TH MAY

Workshops available before main barn opens (see workshops selection below).

From 10.30
Music to Watch Seeds Grow By play ambient morning musings from the label — the perfect way to start the day.

11:00
Music to Watch Seeds Grow By. What began as a soundtrack for the first signs of life from Tia & Wil of Ransom Note Records has sprouted across two growing seasons — ambient, minimalist & new-age soundscapes with the occasional cosmic detour. Here, Wil gives some background to the label’s past, present and future, and is joined by experimental artist and producer Kayla Painter, who will discuss her upcoming work for the label.

11:55
Live performance from Kayla Painter.

12:50
Talking to Ghosts: Memoir, Biography, Place and Time. Award-winning rural and nature writer and campaigner Nicola Chester speaks to CBTR’s Tallulah Brennan about how the ghosts of our past, present and future aren’t always human; are sometimes ourselves or people with relevance now, with something to say. How listening to, and interrogating them can help us understand what we’ve lost and how, so we can face the future with hope and action. This talk hinges on Nicola’s most recent book Ghosts of the Farm: the true story of two wannabe women farmers, 60-80 years apart in the same fields, and the ghosts of our pasts, present and futures. Special guest Gareth Fulton joins the panel to contextualise Elmley and its agricultural history within Nicola’s work.

13:45
Are You Lost? Community and Nature in the Forest of Bowland and Beyond. Rob St John and Tallulah Brennan will discuss Rob’s recent project Are You Lost?, and what happens when artists connect with community in a meaningful way. Rob is an artist and writer based in rural Lancashire. His practice is focused on the blurrings of nature and culture in contemporary landscapes. He works primarily across installation, sound, moving image and text. His work, usually based on slow periods of fieldwork and socially-engaged practice, has been shown/heard at Tate Modern, Victoria and Albert Museum, The Barbican, The British Museum, The National Gallery, Tramway Glasgow, The Royal Geographical Society, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, The British Textile Biennial, and many others. He has variously produced, edited and contributed to numerous publications, both artistic and academic.

14:40
Make Some Space for Resistance. Expanding on her far-reaching work on community spaces, author Emma Warren considers our need for collective community space and action in a time of tech billionaires and the far right. Emma’s book Up the Youth Club: Illuminating a Hidden History (Faber, 2025) was named an Irish Times read of the year. Dance Your Way Home (2023) was a Guardian book of the year and formed the basis of last year’s summer season at the Southbank Centre. Emma is also the author of Document Your Culture (Sweet Machine, 2020), Steam Down (Rough Trade Books, 2019), and Make Some Space (Sweet Machine, 2019). A dual citizen of Ireland and the UK, her monthly radio show on Worldwide FM ran for six years. Emma will be joined by special guest Mathew Clayton.

15:45
Lamine — plant shop owner, and one half of plant and fungi biosonification duo Plants Can Dance — demonstrates how music can be made from plants’ biorhythms, using specimens collected from the Elmley site. This slot features a live performance from Lamine, as well as an opportunity to try out biosonification for yourself.

16:55
We Came By Sea: Horatio Clare in conversation with Tallulah Brennan. Off the back of his recent book We Came By Sea (Little Toller, 2025), Horatio Clare and Tallulah discuss human and humane approaches to people caught up in the ‘small boats’ crisis. Horatio is a Welsh writer and broadcaster. His acclaimed memoirs, travel and children’s books include Running for the Hills (Somerset Maugham Award), A Single Swallow, Down to the Sea in Ships (Stanford Dolman Award), and Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot (Branford Boase Award), and the ‘game-changing’ Heavy Light – Daily Telegraph. Horatio presents Is Psychiatry Working? on BBC Radio 4 and writes regularly for the international press. He also delivers training to NHS intervention teams and lectures in non-fiction at the University of Manchester.

17:50
The Music of Zakia Sewell’s Albion. Emma Warren and Zakia Sewell discuss Zakia’s recent book Finding Albion — an exploration of British national identity, folk culture and myth (Hodder Press, 2026) — accompanied by related music selections from Zakia. Zakia Sewell is a writer, DJ and broadcaster based in London. She hosts Dream Time on BBC Radio 6 Music, and used to host the flagship breakfast show on NTS Radio. For the past eight years she has been producing and presenting radio documentaries and podcasts for platforms such as BBC Radio 3 and 4, Tate and Camden Arts Centre. Her acclaimed four-part Radio 4 series My Albion was an inspiration for her book. Her writing has appeared in publications including Tate Etc., Resident Advisor and Weird Walk as well as in the essay collection This Woman’s Work.

19:15
Zakia Sewell takes over the decks, playing a selection of serene and beautiful records.

21:30
Along with his 5-piece band, composer and producer Andrew Wasylyk — whose arrangements span the breadth of contemporary-classical, ambient soundscapes, cinematic scores, spiritual jazz and experimental electronica — plays a headline set that is not to be missed. Wasylyk’s last 5 albums have been nominated for Scottish Album of The Year Award. This includes 2020’s, Fugitive Light And Themes Of Consolation, which entered the UK Official Jazz & Blues chart at #6 and was Gideon Coe’s (BBC Radio 6Music) Album Of The Year. His work has been displayed in National Galleries Of Scotland and collected by V&A Dundee.

22:45-late
Heavenly Jukebox is the DJ arm of the legendary Heavenly Recordings, who have been playing the finest records and tearing up the dancefloor and fields at festivals, club, gigs and parties since 1990. They are also the resident DJs at The Social in London and host a monthly radio show on Soho Radio.

ACROSS THE WEEKEND, OUTSIDE THE BARN

Bird ringing
We had hoped to have a perfectly timed opportunity for bird ringing over the weekend but unfortunately the Elmley ecologists have let us know this is now not possible, as the target birds are nesting earlier than expected and it would therefore be unethical to hold them off the nest or from feeding young. We have instead scheduled a tour/talk with the reserve manager about the Curlew Recovery Project and the key species on the reserve, on the Friday and Saturday (time will be advertised on boards outside the barn each day). We have also added a moth trapping session on Saturday morning.

Welmarsh Hide
Elmley volunteers will be offering the opportunity to get your eyes round some hi-spec birding kit (kind courtesy of Swarovski Optik).

Self-directed walking, exploring, swimming and bird-watching is available all weekend. The swimming ponds are accessible all day, and the swimming at Cockleshell Beach is tide-dependent.

A selection of short nature-related films will be playing in Swale Studios.

SATURDAY ONLY
Moth trapping
Drop-in session 9.30-11:00 with Elmley volunteers. Get up close and personal with some of Elmley’s fuzziest residents.

Sound workshops with Rob St John
Drop-in session 9.30-12:00 in the reed beds by the old brickworks. Rob will guide attendees through using hydrophones to listen underwater in the reed beds, and will encourage creative interpretation of what can be heard.

Printing workshops with Rosa Amora & Riley Summer
Gel printing drop-in slots 10:00-11:00 and 11.30-12.30, then collage workshops, 14.30-15.30 & 16:00-17:00 (up to 10 people at a time). Print and collage posters that explore and celebrate the wonder of animal and human migration stories.

Owl walk
A group owl walk will take place at 20:30 on Saturday evening. Meet in front of the barn, up to 20 people, first come first serve.

SUNDAY
Walk, swim and birdwatch on site at your leisure.

TRANSPORT
You can get the train to either Sittingbourne or Swale stations. Elmley is approximately 10-15 minutes from either station.

From Sittingbourne, please prebook a cab from any of the following companies, or use the taxi rank outside the station.

Taxis can also be prebooked to pick you up at Swale. We are also operating a free shuttle from this station, but places need to be reserved in advance by emailing gracesp [at] elmleynaturereserve [dot] co [dot] uk.

Our free electric shuttle will be available to meet the following trains at Swale station:

Friday 15th May from Swale Station to Elmley
Train arriving at 14:32 – shuttle slots available at 14:32 & 14:50
Train arriving at 15:32 – shuttle slots available at 15:32 & 15:50
Train arriving at 16:32 – shuttle slots available at 16:32 & 16:50

Saturday 16th May from Swale Station to Elmley
Train arriving at 10:32 – shuttle slots available at 10:32 [FULLY BOOKED] & 10:50
Train arriving at 11:32 – shuttle slots available at 11:32 & 11:50

Sunday 17th May from Elmley to Swale Station
Shuttle slots available at 13:40 & 14:00 to catch the 14:22pm train to Sittingbourne
Shuttle slots available at 14:40 & 15:00 to catch the 15:22 train to Sittingbourne
Shuttle slots available at 15:40 & 16:00 to catch the 15:22 train to Sittingbourne

Outside of these times and availabilities, please arrange a local cab to transport you between the station and event site. Firms:

Let’s Go Green Cabs 01795 444444
Sealine Taxis 01795 509999
Ocean Taxi Sheerness 07393 651268
Sheppey Transfers 07950 550284

For the more adventurous (and lighter-travelling!) attendee, it is also possible to walk to the Elmley site from Swale station (tide-dependent). Please consult tide times and plan your route carefully (at your own risk) if you are planning to reach the event this way.

Reaching the site by car
From Junction 5 on the M2, follow the A249 towards Sheerness. The reserve is signposted from the exit for Iwade and Ridham Dock, which is immediately before the main Sheppey bridge. At the roundabout, take the second exit onto the old road bridge. On the Isle of Sheppey, after a minute or two, take the first right, following the brown Elmley Reserve sign. Take the second left with the Elmley sign. There is a 2 mile (3km) access road to the car park at Kingshill Farm.

For Google Maps/Sat Nav, use the following address:

Kingshill Farm, Isle of Sheppey, Kent, ME12 3RW.

Please note that Google Maps and Sat Nav can sometimes have trouble finding the site; so do feel free to alternatively use the postcode ME12 3RN to take you to the bottom of the entry track. The site is located only a minute or two onto the Isle of Sheppey, so if you have been driving on the Island for longer than this then you’ve gone too far!

You can also use ‘What 3 Words’ to locate the site: What3Words; ///trips.mount.whirlwind

The car park is highlighted on the above map. Parking is free and you do not need any additional accreditation or permit for your vehicle.

If the predator gate at the entrance to the site is closed when you are leaving/arriving please input code 056798, and press enter. The gate will close behind you automatically.