Merlin Hanbury-Tenison – Our Oaken Bones

Join Cornish conservationist and veteran Merlin Hanbury-Tenison, as he talks about his inspiring new book, Our Oaken Bones. Reeling from the pain of devastating miscarriages and suffering from PTSD after military adventures in Afghanistan, Merlin and his wife Lizzie leave the bustle of London and return to Merlin’s childhood home, Cabilla, a Cornish hill farm in the heart of Bodmin Moor. Here they are met by unexpected challenges: a farm slipping ever further into debt, the discovery that their woods are in fact one of the UK’s last remaining fragments of Atlantic temperate rainforest, and the sudden and near catastrophic outcome from Covid of Merlin’s father, the renowned explorer Robin Hanbury-Tenison. As they fall more in love with the rainforest, so begins a fight to save not only themselves and their farm, but also one of the world’s most endangered habitats.