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Event Reviews by James Reynolds

James Reynolds is an offer-holder for English Literature at Durham University who previously studied at the Exmouth Community College Post 16. He has written these short reviews of some of the talks from this year's September festival.

Francesca Beauman, from Persephone Books, talking to Mary Morris

For the very first talk at this year’s festival, historian, bookseller and publisher Francesca Beauman exuded passion and purpose, discussing the authentic beauty of Persephone Books. Persephone Books is a publishing agency dedicated to sourcing books gone out of print, predominantly written by female authors in the inter-war period, and bringing them back onto our shelves. Hence the namesake: like Persephone, these books, held in the dark for so long, return to the light.
To set the scene, the astonishing journey of Persephone books was modestly described: Francesca’s mother, Nicola Beauman, founded the business from her basement, growing her collection, until the explosive sale of Mrs Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson gave the new company the boost it needed to open the Bookshop in Bloomsbury. Now, Persephone Books owns a beautiful Grade II listed building in Bath which acts as an HQ for their mission to, in Francesca’s words, ‘smash the literary canon’.
The carefully curated repertoire of Persephone books does not simply aim to give spotlight to forgotten authors but ensures that the books republished are all skilfully written, thought-provoking, thematically rich, and strongly plotted. The result is a selection of books which has attracted an avid readership. Francesca stresses the importance of the trust the readers have in the judgement of the curators, and delights in the fact a thriving, interactive community that has built up as a result of this trust.
The Persephone Books newsletter embodies this as well: put together by Nicola Beauman, it provides readers with a catch-up on what her and Persephone Books staff have been up to, and touches on anything from dead-heading garden flowers to the failure of HS2. It plays a key role in maintaining the friendship and trust between readers and publishers that is so key to Persephone Books’ mission.
When asked whether Persephone books keep a particular theme in mind when deciding which books to publish, Francesca responds that the curated books have an undercurrent of domestic feminism, which maintains that stories of female life in the home, and in everyday life, are just as significant as stories from battlefields and aggrandised struggles.
In this spirit, Persephone Books, as an institution, does not shy away from the political. Their latest release, Sally Carson’s Crooked Cross, released originally in 1934, is a contemporaneous warning of the consequences of rising Nazidom, set in a small Bavarian village focussing on the life of a woman engaged to a Jewish doctor, and is a shining example of how radical, political and powerful Persephone Books can be. The team at Persephone Books had it on the shelves for decades before publishing it, deeming it the novel of the political moment. It sold 1,000 copies within a single day.
Francesca assured the audience there are shelves and shelves of titles in storage, or yet to be discovered, ready to become the beautifully styled, dove-grey covers of Persephone Books.

Emily Hauser talks about her book Mythica with Mary Morris

The award-winning classicist, historical fiction author, and University of Exeter lecturer in classics Emily Hauser joined Mary Morris at the Church on the Green to discuss her latest book, Mythica, which explores the neglected stories and identities of the women in Homer’s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Hauser explained how her new book combines archaeological advances, literary insights and a compelling imagination to give a voice to the voiceless women who populate Homer’s writings. She told the story of Helen of Troy silently weaving a tapestry of the Greeks and Trojans at war, depicting atrocities and tragedies, utterly powerless to put an end to the horror.
Hauser delved deeper into this tableau, though – firstly, new research showed that women in Ancient Greece were, unlike previously thought, key economic contributors: some women would spend up to 10 hours a day weaving and would spin with their shuttle and loom while going about their days. This incredibly important production has been so long forgotten because textiles have disappeared in the mists of time, but metal helmets and greaves do not degrade so easily.
Secondly, Hauser drew her audience’s attention to the common stem of ‘text’ and ‘textiles’ – weaving and storytelling are reflective and intertwined throughout Homer’s works. Here, this sign of female authorship, a record of the tragedy and horror is Helen’s only vestige of power over the fate of the war.
The theme of drawing public attention to the presence and power of ancient Greek women runs through her whole work: each chapter focusses on one woman from Homer’s epics, and starts with a descriptive paragraph imagining her, humanising these often overlooked and misunderstood characters. Hauser related her desire to remember the humanity of these women, and the real women present in Homer’s era.
As a Classics professor, she heard often about students studying Plato and Homer, but less often about students reading lots of classical female writers and poets. This is because their works were not preserved as in the past female classical writers were not valued as much as male writers, so texts are fewer in number and often more fragmented, like Sappho’s poems. This is what Hauser is fighting by building a book around the importance and character of women in ancient times and in ancient stories.
She remembered writing her first novel in secret during her PhD, over a six-month period, with an ‘explosive joy’. Similarly, it delighted her to bring the popular and serious sides of her writing together in Mythica, crafting an immaculately researched and scholarly text, infused with her colloquial and witty voice and imagination. She carried a passion for giving a voice to those who have been forgotten, standing up for their legacies by protecting and recreating their stories, and her book is a distillation of this mission.

Hilary Mantel Emerging Writers’ Event: Jessica Stanley and Joanna Miller talk to Jennie Godfrey

At the Hilary Mantel Emerging Writers’ Event, Jessica Stanley and Joanna Miller joined Jennie Godfrey at the Temple Church. Stanley, a journalist and author of debut novel Consider Yourself Kissed, and Miller, a two-time Oxford graduate and author of The Eights, discussed their journeys to publication and the inspirations behind their work.
Miller’s novel tracks the story of the first four women to study alongside men at Oxford, and the misogyny and restrictions that surround them, as well as the dangerous secrets from their pasts.
After Covid stopped Miller’s poetry-writing business, as special occasions were cancelled for lockdown, her sister convinced her to take a creative writing course. Somewhat reluctantly, Miller agreed, and found herself searching for a concept to write about. After seeing a celebration of 100 years celebrating women studying at Oxford alongside men, she felt compelled to imagine how they must have felt, hemmed in by ridiculous rules, like the fact they couldn’t go anywhere without a chaperone. Her novel gives a voice and identity to these Oxford pioneers.
Stanley’s book is not your typical romantic novel – it tracks “what happens after the happy ever after”. It follows a couple called Coralie and Adam from the moment they fall in love, to ten years on into their relationship, from 2013 to 2023, an era of national turmoil.
Stanley has previously published a novel in Australia, but it had taken her eight years to complete, and she had felt unsure whether she would write another. This time, she confesses, she was “writing about love, for love of writing”. She wanted to capture something of how all of us felt, going through family life in such a crisis-filled decade. It’s no coincidence Adam is a political journalist – Stanley concentrates her own extensive political knowledge and the worries of the nation through his eyes.
Both books required meticulous research and displayed a wealth of literary talent – Godfrey noted how Miller had set herself quite a challenge as a debut novelist to write from four different points of view. Miller described each of her characters, and how she gave each a distinctive voice and character. But this was not the only challenge she faced – her novel is set in Oxford and demanded a lot of research. To balance her fact with fiction, Miller would spend days visiting locations from her novel. She consulted a St. Hugh’s college academic giving her work an Oxford edit, helping her to remain faithful to the truth, whilst also generating an engaging plot.
Stanley’s research was just as copious. She divulged her thorough process: she had a spreadsheet of her character’s ages, political perspective and the dates. It covered 100 years of British political history. She poured her familial love and political awareness into her characters, skilfully depicting the ebbs and flows of a long-term relationship.
Both debuts come from women whose love of writing is matched only by their talent and clarity of vision.

Tracey Borman talks about her book The Stolen Crown with Julia Wheeler

Prolific writer and Chief Historian for Historic Royal Palaces, whose purview includes Hampton Court and the Tower of London, Tracey Borman joined Julia Wheeler in St Peter’s Church to discuss her new exposé on the Stuart succession to Elizabeth I’s throne, which reached number six on the Sunday Times Bestseller list.
The Stolen Crown, Borman’s new book, explores the causes, nature and consequences of James Stuart’s ascension to the English throne. Borman felt compelled to explore this after new analysis by the British Library revealed that the pre-eminent account of Elizabeth’s deathbed decision to name James as her heir was tampered with after her death. This was William Camden’s account, which the British Library revealed had pages ripped out and pasted over, showing that the record of the succession was added later. James decided Camden’s account would be the veridical, official version of Elizabeth’s deathbed decision only after he had ensured it promulgated his legitimacy by claiming that Elizabeth named him heir. In other accounts, all she did was raise her hand at the sound of James’ name (which she also did at the Archbishop of Canterbury’s name) which was taken to mean James should take the throne.
Borman looked back at why Elizabeth refused to name an heir throughout her reign, suggesting it is likely Elizabeth remembered how, during Mary I’s reign, she was hailed as the new replacement queen during a rebellion. Hence, she knew that even potential heirs were threats to her supremacy, especially due to her questionable legitimacy, because of her mother Anne Boleyn’s treason and execution.
This is not to say there were no potential heirs: on the contrary, Borman revealed that the succession was far less certain than James purported after his ascension. Borman identified many of the potential heirs, including the Katherine and Mary Grey, Edward Seymour, Mary Queen of Scots, Henry Hastings of Huntingdon, Arbella Stuart and, of course, King James VI of Scotland.
Due to his courtly connections and his long-standing correspondence with Elizabeth – he and Elizabeth regularly sent letters to one another for a longer period than any other two sovereigns – he beat his various surviving competitors to the throne. Since fear over a civil war breaking out over succession again, like it did in the Anarchy and in the War of the Roses, was rampant amongst the common people he was hastily accepted. But, Borman stresses, this acceptance was rushed – James and the subsequent Stuart kings were later hated by many. The Stuart ascension led to the witchfinding craze, the Gunpowder Plot and, eventually, the English Civil War. James, blinded by misogyny and arrogance, had failed to listen to all of Elizabeth’s advice in her letters on how to rule, and how differently English Parliament operated compared to Scottish Parliament.
Borman also discussed her love and research into Thomas Cromwell, the head advisor of Henry VIII, and confesses she was inspired by Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall to address how history had depicted him as a cut-throat character when he was, in fact, a loyal and charitable man. Borman even got married in the Church where Cromwell was buried!
Before finishing, Borman teased the release of her next novel in May, entitled: The House of Boleyn…

Twists and Turns: Paula Hawkins and Chris Chibnall talk with Clare Clark

Clare Clark welcomed Paula Hawkins and Chris Chibnall to the Public Hall to discuss their respective new thrillers.
Chibnall is an accomplished screenwriter, behind many national favourites, like Broadchurch, Doctor Who and Life on Mars; he is currently working on a Netflix adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Seven Dials Mystery.
He came to talk about his debut novel, Death at the White Hart, which begins with a man driving late one misty evening, who comes across a corpse with a crown of antlers tied to a chair half in a hessian sack. Subsequently, the regular patrons of the dead man’s pub become suspects.
The pub, and the village it’s in, Chibnall explains, are representative of the country as a whole – the inhabitants are caught between modernity and tradition, and their lives are being changed in little ways by large-scale disruption. Into this melee of ordinary life and big issues, Chibnall’s detective, Nicola Bridge, steps in with her own tension between her work and her life.
Hawkins is a celebrated novelist, particularly well known for The Girl on the Train, which sold 23 million copies, was translated into over 50 languages, and was adapted into a film. Her new thriller, The Blue Hour, has returned her to the bestseller list for the fourth time.
She looked back to what motivated all the original and generative elements of her plot. The image of a tidal island off the Scottish coast evoked questions and ideas in Hawkins’ storytelling mind. She could create a sort of ‘locked room’ impossibility, and the atmosphere and isolation of such a location was the perfect place to harbour secrets and their reclusive secret-keeper.
Hawkins’s first chapter sets out the initiating mystery in an email from a forensic psychologist, exposing that something in one of deceased artist Vanessa Chapman’s works which had been thought to have been a deer bone was in fact human; this was inspired by an essay Hawkins read on the similarities between deer and human bones.
This provokes James Becker, a curator of Chapman’s work to visit her home, a tidal island, to investigate. This set the groundwork for him to start controlling the narrative around Chapman’s life and work. Hawkins used this to explore how female artists are talked about and how their legacies are perceived through male lenses – something she was very interested in portraying.
Both authors concurred that the cores of their plots arose from these original concepts and the personalities and humanity in their characters. Hawkins, who confessed she is not a big planner, finds connections and possibilities as she develops her stories, using Post-its on a wall usually about halfway through her writing process. Unreliable characters and narration fuels this for her. Chibnall is the same, alive to the material as it presents itself; he said he focussed on creating the overlooked characters of Britain and making the tension between truth and trust in community generate the narrative suspense.

Valentine Low talks about his book The Power and the Palace with Julia Wheeler

Former royal correspondent for The Times and Sunday Times Bestseller Valentine Low joined Julia Wheeler at St Peter’s Church to discuss his upcoming book, Power and the Palace, which draws on almost 100 interviews, enormous amounts of research and key socio-political networks.
Low’s visit coincided with Trump’s unprecedented second state visit, which Wheeler asked him about, and he described it as a perfect example of the mutual expediency between the King and Number 10. Charles is making himself useful to Starmer, by doing what he does best: being a good host. Low adds Charles is also trying to solidify the political role of the monarchy, and the importance of this should not be underestimated – Trump loves British royalty. Charles helped also in comforting Zelenskyy and assuring him Europe was still very much supporting him when he visited, but Low makes one thing clear: the King would not have done this without the permission of Number 10.
It is this relationship Low explored through his discussion. He took the audience’s imaginations far into the Victorian past, describing the difficulty politicians had with Queen Victoria – he told of how she would shout at MPs, and even threatened to abdicate over the Crimean War’s poor government. But even the fierce Victoria had a mutually beneficial relationship with the government – she was practically taught how to be a Queen by Lord Melbourne and grew to get on well with the various Prime Ministers elected in her reign.
Low’s discussion balanced stories from the past and stories from the present. From the time Churchill offended King George by calling some peers in the House of Lords ‘upper class wastrels’, to the time Boris Johnson raised some eyebrows in Buckingham by promoting a lowly female aide to the youngest-ever peer, at 29, for no apparent reason, Low spun us funny and illuminating tales from the corridors of power. His insights into the overlapping royal and political spheres were never short of scintillating.
Low explained the symbiosis between these worlds by delving into the same text the Royals study to understand it. Low began by explaining that the UK has a constitution, a collection of different documents making up the UK legal and political system; several books have been written about this constitution, but the most interesting one for Low is by Walter Bagehot. Low covered what Bagehot’s three main duties and rights for the monarch are: to warn, to encourage and to advise. These three core points of engagement keep the royal helpful but not overbearing. And, as Low insisted, this is the key to ensuring the monarchy remains relevant and therefore protects them as part of the UK political system in a country where republicanism is on the rise. 20-30% of the population identify as anti-monarchist.
Low’s talk exposed some of the narratives and secrets behind the mystique and allure of the monarchy, clarifying their role and rights with enthralling stories and energy.

Helen Scales talking about her What the Wild Sea Can Be with Jo Durrant

Dr Helen Scales joined Jo Durrant at the Temple Church to talk about her latest non-fiction book, What the Wild Sea Can Be, which combines 20 years of exploring and studying to concentrate all the wonders and plights, fears and hopes, and past and present of our oceans into one whirlwind trip. Not only did Scales share all these fascinating stories, but she also showed an album of captivating photos from the marine and polar creatures and locations she mentioned through her talk. Quite rightly, Scales was shortlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Nonfiction and the Wainwright Prize.
Dr Scales related that she had been prompted to assess the future of the seas after facing the same question so many times: was she hopeful about the fate of the oceans? To respond to this, Dr Scales asks her readers to join her in a visit to the Cenozoic era, describing an early, ubiquitous form of plankton: graptolites, which have now almost disappeared, after a massive climate change event 10 million years into the era. She stresses that a resurgence in biodiversity can follow a climate catastrophe, but only after a long time and the correct conditions.
Following this, Dr Scales plunged the audience back into the 21st century, identifying the three main things humans do that change the ocean: overfishing, particularly with new industrial methods fatal to sea life; pollution, from plastics, and particularly chemical pollution, like PCBs (which continue to haunt the ocean, though now largely illegal); and finally, climate change, which is forcing species to move to stay in their “climate envelope”, or die. The heating currently happening in the sea will create what Dr Scales calls “winner” and “loser” species.
Dr Scales pinpointed a potential “winner” species, already triumphing in the seas: the lionfish. Due to new connections between seas, like the expanded Suez Canal, and the release of the foreign species in new waters, as well as changing sea temperatures, lionfish have moved from the Indian and Pacific Oceans to Atlantic waters. In the Caribbean, lionfish were finding it so easy to hunt, some were recorded to be experiencing Fatty Liver Disease, something only usually found in pet fish when they are fed too often.
But not all species could adapt and benefit so easily: Dr Scales told the story of the colonies of Emperor Penguins on the West Antarctic Peninsula, which rely on the ice sheet to be thick enough to hold them until their chicks have grown up enough to achieve the plumage needed for swimming in such icy waters. The Poles are the fastest warming places on the planet – the ice is melting much earlier than normal, killing a whole generation of chicks from the colony in one winter.
Dr. Scales effused about the wonders of many of our disappearing and flourishing species, and the conservation projects organised to protect them, as well as detailing the concerns for the future of coral and the harm of possible deep-sea mining.

Horatio Clare talks about his We Came by Sea with Clare Clark

Horatio Clare, author and journalist of outstanding dedication and dynamism, joined Clare Clark in the Temple Church to peel off the layers of outrage and confusion surrounding those who come to the UK seeking asylum.
Clare tracked the problems of the UK’s approach to the small boats back to Theresa May, when she served as Home Secretary in the early 2000s: May pushed for more difficult asylum application processes, embedding immigration control into outsourced operations. Clare explained these operations took their job to be to extract as much money as possible while making entrance into the UK as difficult a process as possible. He reported that one of the main companies that handles asylum application was hired to carry out the Ukraine visas programme in the UK but was promptly sacked after it was deemed to be doing reputational harm to Britain in the way it was handling the visa requests.
Moreover, by outsourcing asylum applications, Clare said the UK government “nationalised costs and privatised rewards”. Clare revealed that Clearsprings Ready Homes, which helps to accommodate asylum seekers, sometimes in dire and cramped conditions, took one in every £20 of the Home Office’s budget in 2022/3.
Be that as it may, Clare professed to be suspicious of the words “broken” and “divisive” in the news – his travels have shown him that people are generally decent, hardworking and kind. The narratives of dopamine journalism make newspapers seek out and augment division, obscuring the goodness and common ground of the larger part of the populace.
Clare viewed the asylum system through a much more positive lens: getting so many refugees safely across the English Channel, a notorious stretch of sea and the busiest shipping channel in the world, is the biggest and best rescue operation Britain has ever led. He recalled interviews with asylum seekers who remember seeing the Union Jack on the side of the boat rescuing them from the Channel; the flag signalled a moment of salvation.
And it is this vision of the flag, a symbol of people, their efforts and their values, that Clare values. And he knows that all the political spectrum shares this vision. Having spent time in right-wing pubs and engaged with the political right online, he said they don’t hate the refugees, only those who don’t share their vision of Britain. He maintained that very few openly despise those who crossed the Channel to seek asylum.
The vision of Britain is not disregarded by those seeking asylum; the very opposite. Those Clare met saw Britain as more law-abiding, safe and freer than the European countries they passed through, let alone their own, war-torn or oppressive home countries that forced them to flee. And Clare believes that they do enter the country they expect – a country with a high value for tolerance and diversity – and that this vision should be upheld and protected.
Clare’s words moved those listening to him in the Temple Church: there was laughter and there were tears. He gave a humanising, powerful and clear exposition, and his audience left with a new, more informed perspective.

Exploring the Night: Arifa Akbar and Dan Richards talk with Clare Clark

On the final day of the festival, Dan Richards and Arifa Akbar joined Clare Clark in the Public Hall to discuss their investigations into the night, and its various effects and connotations in our collective psyche.
Akbar, the chief theatre critic for the Guardian, confessed that she’d always been scared and excited by the night; her book, Wolf Moon, is written from a personal perspective, and it explores this duality in great depth, extending to look at its influence on artists, writers and scientists. She referred to Louise Bourgeois’ work depicting the maddening repetition of the loud thoughts and earworms of insomnia, and Van Gogh’s beautiful night scenes. Remembering her scientific research, Akbar explained how sleep paralysis is where you think you’re awake when you aren’t, so your brain stops you from moving to stop you from hurting yourself. But still, no-one knows why this happens. Sleep science still holds a lot of mysteries.
As a child, Akbar was told dark bedtime stories of djinns and ghosts, associating the night with mystery and fear. Akbar told of her own insomnia, and revisited her her teen years and 20s, where she would go on long night walks or spend the night clubbing. When writing Wolf Moon, she traced Dickens’ walks through London, which he took to find what the day hid: homelessness, criminality and prostitution.
Richards began by speaking about climbing in the Swiss Alps with his father, which is also where his book begins: he reported getting lost as they walked and remaining unhappily awake as the night overtook them. He described how waking in the night and sleeping in the day goes against human inhibitions, drawing out restlessness and anxieties. He wanted to follow the routines of those who do work at night, showing the importance and hard work of this invisible workforce, and make the elements of their lives relatable, because he sees that as the job of a writer.
After being almost dying from “happy hypoxia” and Covid-19 during the pandemic, Richards spent a week in hospital, dangerously ill. He recalled a particularly poor night, after he had received a worrying prognosis from his doctor. In the middle of that night, he heard a voice (which he claimed sounded like Alan Bennett’s, but, he reasoned, must have been his own) saying to him, “I’m surprised you’re not taking more of an interest”. After the voice had repeated this, Richards responded with: “Alright Alan, we’re all doing our best”.
From this experience, Richards drew the conclusion that the night was the dwelling-place of the uncanny, which Akbar agreed with. Even the stories we tell children about the night or set in the night contain this duality: tales like the Tiger Who Came to Tea, an iconic and homely book, are strange, frightening stories upon closer look. Both authors concluded that in the night, the duality of hope and fear, rest and restlessness is at its most apparent.

Lucy Easthope on her Come What May with Julia Wheeler

Lucy Easthope, the UK’s leading authority on rebuilding after disaster, who has been consulted after almost every recent national emergency, joined Julia Wheeler at St Peter’s Church to discuss her new book Come What May: Life-Changing Lessons for Coping with Crisis.
As a young catastrophist, Easthope had made a clever legal case for why she should be able to keep using stabilisers on her bike. Now, as a leading emergency planner, she’s been working in response to the unrest in Southport, collaborating with the community and authorities. Her work involves taking care of the deceased, bereaved and the survivors. She related some of the principles she goes into aftermaths with to the audience: she is honest with the community about the difficulty of bereavement and disaster; she is adaptable to the situation, ready to say “I don’t know, but I’ll find out for you”; and each aftermath has phases of reaction and emotion for those affected.
Come What May is a journey into the aftermath of disasters and survivors, using Easthope’s expertise of national emergencies to act as a guide for familial, personal crises. She lost her father in April 2023, and she watched the bereavement and difficulty she saw so much in her work play out microcosmically in herself and her family. Her book explores this in more depth, detailing the pitfalls to avoid when dealing with grief and the inevitable phases the bereaved must go through.
For instance, Easthope explained a phase called “the slump”; this period begins after the immediate aftermath, when the support leaves, and personal life becomes less cushioned by others trying to help, and reality kicks in. While this phase is long and arduous, Easthope stressed that it is normal and necessary to force people forward through the pain; that is tends to get worse before it gets better.
But there are some things which can and ought to be avoided. Easthope demarcated between hope, a positive attitude accompanied by preparedness and caution, and hopium, an over-optimism which inhibits readiness. She urged her audience to be careful what sort of messages they convey to those in crisis – toxic positivity is useless and disheartening. And she cautioned, be careful what you offer to those in crisis. Offloading stuff that we no longer need onto those in crisis is not helpful, and Easthope is a proponent of the hashtag #cashnotstuff.
Easthope’s books have helped not only to give people the best guide to responding to crises, but to connect people. She said she sees people preserving the personal effects of the dead for the bereaved, as she advised in her previous books, and that many people, often young people, contacting her to thank her for the insights she’s shared in her works. And her books have reached the higher levels of government too – Angela Rayner was pictured with one of Easthope’s books on her desk.
Easthope’s scintillating talk exposed some of the less-discussed truths of dealing with grief and trauma, but she navigated them with expertise, honesty and energy.

Tristan Gooley’s talk on his new book The Hidden Seasons

Distinguished natural navigator and writer Tristan Gooley delivered his talk on his new book The Hidden Seasons to the sold-out Public Hall, elucidating techniques new and old on how to navigate the natural world. He was accompanied by a PowerPoint filled with pictures of the natural landscapes he mentioned.
Gooley began by asking the question which underlies his entire book: how does nature’s seasonal clock work? Animals, plants and fungi seem to operate in acute responses to the seasonal shifts of the year and can reveal information about the surrounding landscape to us, if only we know how to interpret their actions.
To answer this question, Gooley started by reaching out to Professor Rosemary Fricker from Cambridge Botanical Gardens, who specialises in neuroscience and phenology (the study of seasonal changes in plants and animals). He began with plants, as, in his words, “everything starts with plants”. While walking the gardens with Fricker and her students, he applied a lesson he learnt in an interview with a Bedouin: questions do not inspire conversation; rather, it is better to state a fact or opinion, prompting your companion to do the same. In the gardens, to break the ice with the students, he pointed out how the differing branches on the sides of a tree showed the direction of the wind.
His talk was packed full of ingenious little notes like this. Nettles, he explained, required rich soil to grow, so their prevalence was a sign of a nearby human settlement supplying organic activity and nutrients to the ground. Moreover, the Peacock butterfly depends on stinging nettles for its life cycle, so seeing a peacock butterfly is a reasonably good sign there are people nearby.
But interpreting the movements and presence of animals is not always so clear-cut. Gooley expounded the mysteries of the dawn chorus as an example: as spring starts, birds will begin to sing as the sun rises in the mornings. This is generally agreed to be a mating ritual, but there are still some quirks that have not been explained away yet. No-one knows why they sing in the morning. On a cloudy day, birds will wait until the light has reached levels they normally sing at before singing. If they are near an airport, birds will sing earlier than the first flight out.
Insects are just as inscrutable – they pause their productive habits sometimes seemingly at random points in the Summer. They can change how large their breeds are each year. But not all animal phenology is so difficult to interpret. Territorial birds, for instance, can help orientate oneself in the outdoors. Gooley told a story of a time he visited Iona and heard a stonechat after he had passed some ruins by the side of the path. On his way back, he heard the same stonechat and an image of the ruins flashed into his mind, and he knew he’d pass by them again.
Gooley’s talk was a replenishing, fascinating delve into all things natural, and his audience left with a wealth of new information and an affirmation of a love for the outdoors.