Tag Archives: Memoir

In My Hands Today…

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The Way of the Hermit: My 40 Years in the Scottish Wilderness – Ken Smith, Will Millard

Could you leave behind the bustle of modern society and spend your days immersed in nature? In The Way of the Hermit, seventy-four-year-old Ken Smith recounts a life he has chosen to spend alone with the wilderness.

Ken Smith has spent the past four decades in the Scottish Highlands. He lives alone, with no electricity or running water. His home is a log cabin nestled near Loch Treig, known as ‘the lonely loch’, where he lives off the he fishes for his supper, chops his own wood, and even brews his own tipple. He is, in the truest sense of the word, a hermit.

For the first time, Ken shares the story of his life. From his working-class origins in Derbyshire, to the formative years he spent travelling in the Yukon and finally how he came to be the Hermit of Loch Treig. Looking back through decades of diary entries, Ken reflects upon the reasons he turned his back on society, the vulnerability of old age and the awe and wonder of a life lived in nature. The Way of the Hermit is a humorous, transcendent and life-affirming memoir.

In My Hands Today…

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In the Hide: How The Natural World Saved My Life – Gordon Buchanan

Our estate, Bellsmyre, was built on land claimed from fields – we were at the foot of those rolling Kilpatrick hills, but over the roof of the school you could see more green fields and woods. There was a physical barrier formed by the rest of the estate and the school, but I felt grateful to be on the edge of all that countryside. Even at a very young age, there was a magnetic pull towards what I thought that wild was, or could be. ‘One day, I’m going to walk to those hills and woods,’ I’d think to myself.

Soon, it would become a sanctuary.

Gordon Buchanan is probably the best known natural history cameraman the BBC has ever produced. From wild ‘snow wolf’ packs in Ellesmere and polar bears in Svalbard to leopards in Mumbai and equine therapy in Mongolia, he has filmed in the world’s most far-reaching places for over 30 years. His dedication to his craft means he often spends weeks inside a cramped camera hide, tolerating extreme sleep deprivation and poor living conditions, all in search of that one extraordinary shot.

But dangerous animals were not the only thing he was hiding from.

In the Hide is Gordon’s emotionally honest and raw account of a brutal childhood in Glasgow and Mull, and the escape and solace he found – and continues to find – in the natural world around him. An intimate and inspiring account of resilience in the face of hardship, Gordon shares the story of his lifelong love for nature like never before.

In My Hands Today…

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Ingrained: An Uplifting Memoir about Woodworking and Craftsmanship – Callum Robinson

The eldest son of a master woodworker, Callum Robinson spent his childhood surrounded by wood and trees, absorbing lessons in his father’s workshop. In time he became his father’s apprentice, helping to create exquisite bespoke objects. But eventually the need to find his own path—to chase ever bigger and more commercial projects and establish a workshop of his own—drew him away. Faced with the end of his business, his team, and everything he had worked so hard to build, he was forced to question what mattered most.

In beautifully wrought prose, Callum tells the story of returning to the workshop and to the wood, to handcrafting furniture for people who will love it and then pass it on to the next generation—an antidote to a culture where everything seems so easily disposable. As he does so, he brings us closer to nature and the physical act of creation—and we begin to understand how he has been shaped, as both a craftsman and a son.

Blending memoir and nature writing at its finest, Ingrained is an uplifting meditation on the challenges of working with your hands in our modern age, on community, consumerism, and the beauty of the natural world—one that asks us to see our local trees, and our own wooden objects, in a new and revelatory light.

In My Hands Today…

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Raising Hare: A Memoir – Chloe Dalton

Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and slept in your house for hours on end and gave birth to leverets in your study. For political advisor and speechwriter Chloe Dalton, who spent lockdown deep in the English countryside, far away from her usual busy London life, this became her unexpected reality.

In February 2021, Dalton stumbles upon a newborn hare—a leveret—that had been chased by a dog. Fearing for its life, she brings it home, only to discover how impossible it is to rear a wild hare, most of whom perish in captivity from either shock or starvation. Through trial and error, she learns to feed and care for the leveret with every intention of returning it to the wilderness. Instead, it becomes her constant companion, wandering the fields and woods at night and returning to Dalton’s house by day. Though Dalton feared that the hare would be preyed upon by foxes, stoats, feral cats, raptors, and even people, she never tried to restrict it to the house. Each time the hare leaves, Chloe knows she may never see it again. Yet she also understands that to confine it would be its own kind of death.

Raising Hare chronicles their journey together, while also taking a deep dive into the lives and nature of hares, and the way they have been viewed historically in art, literature, and folklore. We witness first-hand the joy at this extraordinary relationship between human and animal, which serves as a reminder that the best things, and most beautiful experiences, arise when we least expect them.

In My Hands Today…

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Ungovernable: The Political Diaries of a Chief Whip – Simon Hart

Over the course of five years, Simon Hart had a front-row seat to the most turbulent times in recent British political history. Ungovernable lifts the lid on life as an MP and chief whip during one of its most turbulent eras in modern-day Britain.

From negotiations around Brexit to the impact of Liz Truss’s extraordinary forty-nine-day premiership and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Simon Hart has seen and heard it all. And starting in 2022, under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, he witnessed successive dramas unfold, all while holding down the (often misunderstood) position of chief whip.

Astonishingly, during those whip years, Simon oversaw a near record fifteen Conservative MPs fall by the wayside. Three of these were resignations, including Nadine Dorries and the scandal of her disappearing peerage; two were defections to Labour; and the remaining ten were suspended by Simon for offences ranging from Matt Hancock’s unauthorized appearance on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here to Lee Anderson’s comments about the London Mayor. Each one of these involved an extensive build-up, a complicated process, and a noisy and vitriolic public commentary.

None of this stopped him from becoming one of the few chief whips – of which there have been eleven since 2010 in fourteen consecutive years – to survive for an entire premiership.

In a first-of-its-kind extraordinary look at life as a chief whip, Ungovernable is a revealing, real-time, blow-by-blow account – offering a glimpse of what truly goes on in Westminster behind closed doors.