Skip to main content

The Importance of Being Local: Loving Nature Close to Home

When: —
Venue: Online

Book your place

Acclaimed nature writers Nicola Chester and Nick Acheson join Birkbeck research fellow Michael Warren to discuss the topic of local living. 


Acclaimed nature writers Nicola Chester and Nick Acheson join Birkbeck research fellow Michael Warren to discuss the topic of local living. Drawing upon their lifelong experiences in the particular places where they have grown up, loved and know intimately, they will explore the deep importance of understanding and fighting for the local places in our lives, especially now that the environmental crisis has brought sharply into focus the problems with the Western world's global ambitions. Few of us now live truly local lives, but many more of us are now beginning to realise the value of doing so. Nicola and Nick will also read from their recently published books.

Nicola Chester has always lived in or near the glorious heart of the North Wessex Downs, the experience of which she narrates in prize-winning memoir On Gallows Down. She is the RSPB's first and longest-running female columnist in Nature’s Home magazine, and a Guardian Country Diarist. Find her on Twitter @nicolawriting.

Nick Acheson grew up in North Norfolk. For many years he lived abroad and led wildlife tours around the world, but gave up flying entirely for environmental reasons in 2019, since when, from his flint cottage by a duck pond just a stone's throw from where he grew up, he has worked as an ambassador for various conservations bodies, particularly the Norfolk Wildlife Trust. His book The Meaning of Geese is the story of his 1,200 mile journey (on his mother's 40 year old red bike) around North Norfolk one winter in search of the famous geese that winter there. Nick is on Twitter @themarshtit.

Dr Michael J. Warren As a medievalist, Michael is author of Birds in Medieval English Poetry and series editor of the journal Medieval Ecocriticisms. He continues his work on human-nonhuman relationships in medieval literature and culture as honorary research fellow at Birkbeck College. Michael is also a nature writer--his book The Cuckoo's Lea--a journey in search of birds in our ancient place names and the ways in which birds evoke a powerful sense of place for us--is out with Bloomsbury in 2025. He blogs at https://compleatbirder.wordpress.com/ and can be found on Twitter at @DrMJWarren. 

Contact name: