An evening with Merlin Hanbury-Tenison

Join conservationist and veteran Merlin Hanbury-Tenison, as he chats about his inspiring new book, Our Oaken Bones.

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.