Tower and Town, October 2018

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Tim Dee

Ground Work: Writings on Places and People

Tim Dee is a radio producer, bird watcher and author. He came to the very first Marlborough Litfest in 2010. Some of you may remember his talk on The Running Sky, a wonderfully poetic book on birds. He’s coming to Litfest this year as the editor of an anthology of new writing by some of our finest and most exciting nature writers.

Ground Work was inspired by the charity Common Ground which was founded in 1983 with the aim of seeking “imaginative ways to engage people with their local environment”. They’ve helped foster community projects such as Apple Day, parish mapping and community orchards. Part of the book’s profits will go to the charity.

In his startling introduction to the book Tim Dee writes: “We are living in the Anthropocene - an epoch where everything of our planet’s current matter and life, as well as the shape of things to come, is being determined above all by the ruinous activities of just one soft-skinned, warm-blooded, short-lived, pedestrian species. How then to best live in the ruins that we have made?”

The anthology tries to answer this. The writing above all is an exploration of local distinctiveness. The spirit of a place, especially in our global corporate world, remains vitally important and works best on a local, human scale. So, we have memories of childhood homes from Adam Thorpe and Marina Warner, Tessa Hadley describes her London garden and Helen Macdonald recalls growing up in a five-acre walled estate and reflects on our failed stewardship of the planet. Further afield contributors journey from the Arizona desert to the Canadian Arctic.

Ground Work is a timely and important book. It helps us look at how we relate to the wild. Helen Macdonald says “During this sixth extinction, we who may not have time to do anything else must write now what we can, to take stock.”

Jan Williamson