Gossip From The Forest

Product Description

Fairytales are one of our earliest & most vital cultural forms & forests one of our most ancient & primal landscapes. Both evoke a similar sensation in us
- we find them beautiful & magical but also spooky sometimes horrifying. In this fascinating book Maitland argues that the two forms are intimately connected: the mysterious secrets & silences gifts & perils of the forests were both the background & the source of fairytales. Yet both forests & fairy stories are at risk & their loss deprives us of our cultural lifeblood. Maitland visits forests through the seasons from the exquisite green of a beechwood in spring to the muffled stillness of a snowy pine wood in winter. She camps with her son Adam whose beautiful photographs are included in the book; she takes a barefoot walk through Epping Forest with Robert Macfarlane; she walks with a mushroom expert through an oak wood & with a miner through the Forest of Dean. Maitland ends each chapter with a unique imaginitive re-telling of a fairystory. Written with Saras wonderful clarity & conversational grace Gossip from the Forest is a magical & unique blend of nature writing history & imaginative fiction.