Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure (Hardback) - Samantha Walton (Bath Spa University, UK)

'Beautifully written, intimate and intellectually fascinating' Nathan Filer 'Impeccably researched . . . A call to us all to find a place within the simplicity and complexity of nature' Lara Maiklem, bestselling author of Mudlarking 'Essential reading for our trammelled, troubled times' David Farrier Everybody is talking about the healing properties of nature. Hospitals are being retrofitted with gardens, and forests reimagined as wellbeing centres. On the Shetland Islands, it is possible to walk into a doctor's surgery with anxiety or depression, and walk out with a prescription for nature. Where has this come from, and what does 'going to nature' mean? Where is it - at the end of a garden, beyond the tarmac fringes of a city, at the summit of a mountain? Drawing on history, science, literature and art, Samantha Walton shows that the nature cure has deep roots - but, as we face an unprecedented crisis of mental health, social injustice and environmental devastation, the search for it is more urgent now than ever. Everybody Needs Beauty engages seriously with the connection between nature and health, while scrutinising the harmful trends of a wellness industry that seeks to exploit our relationship with the natural world. In doing so, this book explores how the nature cure might lead us towards a more just and radical way of life: a real means of recovery, for people, society and nature.

About the Author

Samantha Walton is a Reader in Modern Literature at Bath Spa University, where the focus of her research is the link between nature and mental health. Previously, she was a Writing Fellow at the prestigious Rachel Carson Centre in Munich. She is also a poet and has appeared on the BBC, and at a number of festivals including Green Man and Wilderness to speak about her research. She lives in Bristol. @samlwalton