Our Oaken Bones: Reviving a Family, a Farm and Britains Ancient Rainforests

Shortlisted for Wainwright Prizefor Nature Writing 2025

'I lie on the rock to let my limbs dry after my immersion in the river. My bones warm. I have no towel but the moss is grateful for the additional moisture that I bring as the water runs off me and into its spongy web of roots and branches. 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 Merlins 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 UKs last remaining fragments of Atlantic temperate rainforest, and the sudden and near catastrophic strickening by Covid of Merlins 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 worlds 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.