Book of the Day What we lose without the dark Johan Eklöf’s The Darkness Manifesto shows how artificial light is harming the natural world – and what we can do to reverse it. By Melissa Harrison
Books Melissa Harrison: Thanks to The Little Grey Men, I grew up in love with a vision of England I couldn’t find anywhere By Melissa Harrison
Culture The road not taken: Melissa Harrison on why she turned down the dream job of editing a glossy magazine By Melissa Harrison
Feeling severely distressed about the climate crisis? You’re suffering from solastalgia “The pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides… is under immediate assault.” By Melissa Harrison
Personal Story: Taking refuge in the treetops In my imagination, the tree is my friend. It’s glad when I climb it, and enjoys my company. By Melissa Harrison
Winter reflection: A barn owl, fallen from the skies The white bird lies on newspaper in the passageway, black-eyed, breathtakingly beautiful, utterly unmarked. By Melissa Harrison
The strange beauty of gulls We vilify gulls for their proximity to human waste – but for self-declared “larophiles”, gulls are the ne plus ultra… By Melissa Harrison
England’s private and inaccessible countryside Some years ago, deep in the process of writing a novel, At Hawthorn Time, I decided to walk a… By Melissa Harrison