The Bookery in partnership with Sustainable Crediton is proud to present Merlin Hanbury-Tenison – acclaimed Cornish conservationist and founder of Britain’s rainforest charity The Thousand Year Trust – in conversation with Nick Bruce-White, CEO Devon Wildlife Trust. Merlin will be discussing his new book Our Oaken Bones: Reviving a Family, a Farm and Britain’s Ancient Rainforests.

Reeling from the pain of devastating miscarriages and suffering from PTSD after military adventures in Afghanistan, Merlin and his wife Lizzie decide to leave the bustle of London and return to Merlin’s childhood home, a Cornish hill farm called Cabilla in the heart of Bodmin Moor. There, they are met by unexpected challenges: a farm slipping ever further into debt, the discovery that the overgrazed and damaged woods running throughout the valley are in fact one of the UK’s last remaining fragments of Atlantic temperate rainforest, and the sudden and near catastrophic strickening by Covid of Merlin’s father, the explorer Robin. As they fall more in love with the rainforest that Merlin had adventured in as a child, so begins a fight to save not only themselves and their farm, but also one of the world’s most endangered habitats. 

Our Oaken Bones is an honest and intimate true story about renewal, the astonishing healing power of nature, and our duty to heal it in return.