Our Oaken Bones : Reviving a Family, a Farm and Britain’s Ancient Rainforests by Merlin Hanbury-Tenison

SHORTLISED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2025

The powerful memoir on mental health, the healing power of nature, and how we need to heal it in return – with a blueprint for restoring Britain’s rainforests, perfect for readers of The Lost Rainforests of Britain.

Scholarly, wise, funny, charming, terrifying and thrilling... I adored it all, every page. - JOANNA LUMLEY Both a comfort and an inspiration - CHLOE DALTON, bestselling author of Raising Hare This is a lovely book - wise, brave, thoughtful, painfully intimate - but with a remarkable spiritual and environmental vision. - RORY STEWART --------------------------------------

I look up through the canopy and time freezes as the oak leaves drift gently backwards and forwards, dappling the light as it falls onto my body. I am home.

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. Praise for Our Oaken Bones An enormously moving and inspiring story about war, trauma, nature and rebirth, written with infectious passion and unsparing honesty. I loved it. - DOMINIC SANDBROOK An extraordinarily courageous, urgent and powerful book. - ISABELLA TREE Deeply compelling... emotional, informative, pleasurable. I believe that this is an important work with planet-sized dreams and ambitions. Perhaps the greatest philosophy or teachable lesson that came to me off the page is that dominion comes with responsibility. - RUSSELL CROWE I love this book. - RICK STEIN Powerfully enchanting, written with verve and imbued with hope. - GUY SHRUBSOLE

Format:Paperback / softback 304 pages
Publisher:Ebury Publishing
Imprint:Witness Books
ISBN:9781529144239
Published:19 Feb 2026
Classifications:South West England, Memoirs, Forests, rainforests, Conservation of the environment
Weight:276g