Nature Cure
'Britain's greatest living nature writer' The Times
Rediscover the extraodinary power of nature and the British wilderness, from award-winning naturalist and author Richard Mabey
In the last year of the old millennium, Richard Mabey, Britain's foremost nature writer, fell into a severe depression. The natural world – which since childhood had been a source of joy and inspiration for him – became meaningless.
Then, cared for by friends, he moved to East Anglia and he started to write again. Having left the cosseting woods of the Chiltern hills for the open flatlands of Norfolk, Richard Mabey found exhilaration in discovering a whole new landscape and gained fresh insights into our place in nature.
Structured as intricately as a novel, a joy to read, truthful, exquisite and questing, Nature Cure is a book of hope, not just for individuals, but for our species.
'A brilliant, candid and heartfelt memoir...how he broke free of depression, reshaped his life and reconnected with the wild becomes nothing short of a manifesto for living...Mabey's particular vision, informed by a lifetime's reading and observation, is ultimately optimistic' Sunday Times
Richard Mabey is the father of modern nature writing in the UK. Since 1972 he has written some forty influential books, including the prize-winning Nature Cure, Gilbert White: a Biography, and Flora Britannica. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Vice-President of the Open Spaces Society.
He spent the first half of his life amongst the Chiltern beechwoods, and now lives in Norfolk in a house surrounded by ash trees.