Our Oaken Bones: The story of a Family, a Farm and Britain’s Ancient Rainforests

with Merlin Hanbury-Tenison

Join Cornish conservationist and founder of The Thousand Year Trust, Merlin Hanbury-Tenison, for an intimate conversation about his moving memoir Our Oaken Bones—a story of personal healing, environmental restoration, and the extraordinary resilience of nature.

After years of service in Afghanistan and the grief of repeated miscarriages, Merlin and his wife Lizzie returned to his childhood home: a struggling hill farm on Bodmin Moor. There, they discovered something astonishing—remnants of one of Britain’s last Atlantic temperate rainforests hidden in the overgrazed woods.

In this powerful event, Merlin shares how a return to the land helped him rebuild his life, and how his mission to restore Britain’s rainforests is rooted in both deep ecology and deep love. A rallying call to reimagine our relationship with the natural world.