Author and conservationist Merlin Hanbury-Tenison will discuss his new book Our Oaken Bones: Reviving a Family, a Farm and Britain’s Ancient Rainforests on two dates at the end of April.

He will speak at Clemo Books, Newquay (£5) on Friday, April 25 at 7pm, and at Falmouth Poly on Tuesday, April 29 (£8) from 6.30pm as part of the Wayward Book Festival. Both talks will be followed by a Q&A and a book signing session.

The son of explorer Robin Hanbury-Tenison, Merlin grew up at Cabilla, the family farm near Colliford Lake on Bodmin Moor. After serving eight years in the British Army, he spent eight more working in the city, witnessing the increasing levels of stress and anxiety caused by urban living.

Reeling from the pain of devastating miscarriages and suffering from PTSD after military adventures in Afghanistan, Merlin, his entrepreneur wife Lizzie and their two young daughters left London and returned to Cabilla for good.

However, they were met by unexpected challenges: a farm in debt; the catastrophic strickening by Covid of Merlin’s father; and the discovery that the valley’s overgrazed and damaged woodland is one of the UK’s last remaining fragments of Atlantic temperate rainforest.

The family began a fight to save themselves, their farm and one of the world’s most endangered habitats. Merlin would go on to transform Cabilla into a wellness centre, where customers get their hands dirty helping to preserve and expand the ancient forest before feeling its benefits through sound baths and woodland sauna sessions.

He also founded The Thousand Year Trust, a rainforest charity with a mission to triple Britain’s rainforest cover to one million acres in the next 30 years.

Our Oaken Bones: Reviving a Family, a Farm and Britain’s Ancient Rainforests is published by Witness Books, RRP £22.