Merlin Hanbury-Tenison

Merlin Hanbury-Tenison will be talking about his new book, Our Broken Bones, a story of how we can heal Britain's rainforests and how they, in turn, can heal us.

After suffering from complex PTSD from three tours in Afghanistan and while struggling to start a family in the face of several miscarriages, Merlin and his wife Lizzie returned home to Cornwall in 2020. There they found 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 fell more in love with the rainforest that Merlin had adventured in as a child, so began 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.