Environmental Discussion and Reading Club

This is a space for people to come together to discuss topics related to climate, nature, the environment, books, and much more! Please come along, even if you haven't read the book in question. There will be lots of room to chat and think about different topics.

Our schedule for 2025 is as follows:

January 21 2025

Windswept: Why Women Walk

by Annabel Abbs

This book tells the stories of women who have walked remote and forbidding paths to satisfy artistic and emotional needs for wilderness and landscape. Annabel Abbs retraces the paths of Georgia O'Keeffe in the empty plains of Texas and New Mexico, Nan Shepherd in the mountains of Scotland, Gwen John following the Garonne, Simone de Beauvoir in the mountains and forests of France and Daphne du Maurier along the River Rhone.

March 18 2025

Rebirding

by Benedict MacDonald

Rebirding is a tour of the reasons for wildlife decline in Britain, as our landscapes become ever more tamed and less diverse. The book ends with a map to restore nature: rewilding our national parks, restoring natural ecosystems and allowing our wildlife a far richer future. In doing so, an entirely new sector of rural jobs would be created; finally bringing Britain’s dying rural landscapes and failing economies back to life.

June 17 2025

How Infrastructure Works: Transforming our shared systems for a changing world

by Deb Chachra

(available in paperback in January)

Infrastructure — the reservoirs, transformers, sewers, cables, and pipes that deliver water, energy, and information to wherever we need it — is mostly invisible, until it breaks down. With the pressures of systemic neglect and the effects of climate change, our systems in need of rebuilding not just to be functional, but also equitable, resilient, and sustainable. The cost of not being able to rely on these systems is unthinkably high. We need to learn how to see them, and fix them, together.

October 21 2025

Our Island Stories: Country walks through colonial Britain

by Corrine Fowler

(available in paperback in May)

In Our Island Stories, historian Corinne Fowler combines local rural life and the global history of colonial rule. Empire transformed rural lives, offering both opportunity and exploitation. Fowler shows how the booming profits of overseas colonial activities, and the select few who benefited, directly contributed to enclosure, land clearances and dispossession. These histories, usually considered separately, continue to shape lives across Britain today.

If you have any questions, please get in touch with Helen (helen.cook@gmail.com).