Praise for Shadows in the Hay:
‘Like each of the black and white photos that sparked this journey into the past, Shadows in the Hay is a tender and poignant portrait, a thoughtful exploration of our cultural estrangement from nature, and a beautifully precise plea for re-engagement. It’s an elegant homage to the landscapes and places that shape us.’
Julian Hoffman, author of The Small Heart of Things and winner of the AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction
‘Shadows in the Hay is a clever, shifting narrative of personal and thoughtful reflection. Evocative and unexpected.’
Derek Niemann, author of Birds in a Cage and Guardian Country Diarist
Shadows in the Hay is the story of our changing and complex relationships with nature and the landscapes that surround us. In part told through the inter-war images of one family’s life on a Herefordshire farm, this is a hymn to the winding threads of a slowly-built intimacy with place and the otherness of the natural world. These images and the author’s experiences amongst the people and wild places of the Arctic Circle, the mountains of Eastern Europe and the open oceans set him on a personal and poignant journey deep into our relationship with the places we call home. Like another picture taken on the very edges of memory and consciousness, Shadows in the Hay tells how a world of journeys came to settle in just a few acres.