Author: GRB

The First-Time Forager
7pm Thursday May 16th at Gloucester Road Books

We all love the idea of foraging – as a way of being connected to nature and discovering new tastes. But in reality, most of us are very wary, and sometimes a bit underwhelmed when we do try. What’s needed is this totally honest, safety-first guide for first-time foragers. This book concentrates on 40 plants that are easy to identify and worth the effort – plants that are tasty and abundant in the wild or in gardens and parks. There are simple recipes to try as well. This isn’t an armchair guide for people dreaming of being Ray Mears or Bear Grylls. It’s for everyday people who lives in towns and suburbs as well as the countryside, and who want to get a little closer to nature and discover new tastes, without stress.

Reviews of Andy’s previous books:

‘Andy’s book reveals the treasure trove in our hedgerows, fields and woodlands.’ Kate Humble

‘If you incorporate a chunk of the advice of this book into your life – and request your friends to read it and do the same – you’ll have made a difference.’ Countryfile Magazine

‘Wow… it’s brilliant! … Packed with fascinating and useful information about the world of foraging, not to mention a good pinch of humour, it makes me want to abandon life as I know it.’ Brigit Strawbridge, star of ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’

About Andy Hamilton

Andy Hamilton is an author, forager and brewer based in Bristol. His bestselling books include The Self-Sufficientish Bible, Booze for Free, Fermenting Everything and Brewing Britain.

He is driven by the idea that everyone would benefit from at least a little bit of foraging in their lives. He has cooked hedgerow toffee apples to an audience of 6 million, live on Autumnwatch, taken the Countryfile team across his home turf in search of wild food, had a BBC Radio 4 food programme dedicated to his Wild Booze and fed wild cocktails to Cerys Matthews and Shelia Dillion.

Our doors opened for the first time in the middle of April 2021.

It’s been a bit of a wait, but the paperback is now here, which is my cue to encourage as many of you as humanly possible to read it.

As is often the case with a really great book, it would be an injustice to summarise what it is about. A nuanced, complicated book such as this resists being reduced to a punchy headline encapsulation.

Our narrator, Sean, has moved back to Belfast after studying literature at university. He is, once again, ensconced in his old mileu. He takes work, when he can find it, at bars and clubs, but tends not to last long. He is drinking too much, taking too many drugs, and generally losing any sense of outward momentum gained during his years of study out of Belfast. What follows is a crisis that has been long in building, through a young lifetime and the lifetimes of previous generations, with an explosive point of reckoning.

Magee is brilliant on the ways in which our relationship to a place can intertwine with our own sense of self, and how difficult they can be to disentangle. He draws us through the influences of political history, family history, mental health, poverty, precarity, and the ways in which they all swirl and intersect around the life of one young man. All of which is crucial to the book, but none of which would work were it not for the pitch perfect voice that Magee manages throughout. His characters are utterly believable, bringing dimension and complex humanity to every stage of the novel.

It is a thoroughly wonderful book, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

We have a lovely stack of paperback copies now in the shop, and it can also be purchased from our website for home delivery.

x Tom

Doors will open at 6pm and BTP will be serving hot & cold drinks. The talk will start at 7pm.

Ruth is an outdoor psychotherapist who uses movement and nature-based practices with her clients. She trained as a geologist and has a doctorate in Himalayan mountain-building.

In Weathering Ruth draws together insights from both fields to reflect on how engagement with the Earth can help us endure life’s storms. What might the natural processes of weathering of ancient natural landforms have to teach us about resilience and change? Ruth will discuss how a deeper understanding of the ground beneath our feet could better serve ourselves and the world about us. Hear how this different take on geology, deep time and ancient landscapes can help us navigate our own grief and experience of our lives during this time of profound environmental, climate and political changes.

As Ruth notes in Weathering: “As a species we are all, collectively, beyond the point of pristine, wilderness thinking. We are all in some proximity to wounded and depleted places, both outside and in. Where there are wounds, there is also richness, community, recovery… We need to love because of and not in spite of, which is the work of time, something that geology has plenty of, but we do not. It might be brief, but what else is time for, if not to love.”

More on Weathering from publisher, Ebury Press:

Rocks and mountains have withstood aeons of life on our planet – gradually eroding, shifting, solidifying, and weathering. We might spend a little less time on earth, but humans are also weathering: evolving and changing as we’re transformed by the shifting climates of our lives and experiences. So, what might these ancient natural forms have to teach us about resilience and change?

In a stunning exploration of our own connection to these enduring forms, outdoor psychotherapist and geologist Ruth Allen takes us on a journey through deep time and ancient landscapes, showing how geology – which has formed the bedrock of her own adult life and approach to therapy – can offer us a new way of thinking about our own grief, change and boundaries.

Ruth Allen PhD is a qualified psychotherapist, writer, and an experienced trainer and facilitator. Originally trained as a geologist, with a doctorate in Himalayan mountain-building, she now specialises in movement and nature-based practice, nature connection and relational embodiment. She is a supervisory director for ‘Rooted for Girls’, a unique woodland-based psycho-educational programme for teenage girls in the North of England, and is influential in the UK outdoor therapy field, offering training to new practitioners and trainees as well as offering expert consultation. In her spare time, she is a keen mountain adventurer. Her first book, the illustrated title Grounded, was published in 2021 to critical acclaim.

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Jack Chadwick stumbled across Caliban Shrieks two years ago in Salford’s Working Class Movement Library. Originally published in 1935 and praised by luminaries such as George Orwell and W.H. Auden, Hilton’s semi-autobiographical novel captures the hardship and toil of the 20th Century’s turbulent, war-blighted times.

With new introductions by Andrew McMillan and Chadwick, the story of Caliban Shriek’s creation is every bit as extraordinary as the man whose life it tells. The same is true of its long overdue reappearance.