‘’At the winter solstice the clouds were heavy, chalk grey, the air still with snow that never seemed to fall. Without the generous canopy and riotous undergrowth of summer, my tiny home felt exposed. No leaves on the hawthorn hedge to offer protection from the wind, or dispel curious glances; in daylight, all my movements could be seen, and in the darkness any light cast from my van window betrayed my presence in the woods. Constellations turned above the thin roof and the long nights and short days sped past.’’

Instead of a boring introduction from yours truly, read the following extract by Nancy Campbell. It is heartbreakingly beautiful.

‘’Candles were lit in the sconces. In this soft light, kindness and kinship hovered at the corners of the rooms as we spoke of books we loved in various languages, recommended other writers in and out of translation, read shyly from the first drafts of poems, and somehow, at some point, I stopped seeing time as something urgently demarcated by the lines in my diary, and began to feel the space open up between them.’’

A haunting mixture of Fiction and Non-Fiction. It is a book that breathes and lives Winter in all its dark, harsh, poetically sad glory. A treasure for the long evenings when time stands still in the finest way possible. In its pages, you will meet Anne Frank, Charles Darwin, Kenneth Grahame, Walt Whitman, Vincent Van Gogh, Charlotte Bronte, to name a few.

the wind
24 December 1943
‘’Whenever someone comes in from outside, with the wind in their clothes and the cold on their cheeks, I feel like burying my head under the blanket to keep from thinking. ‘When will we be allowed to breathe fresh air again?’’
Anne Frank

A snow mountain must be kept safe at all costs in Kyoto and it is simply extraordinary to think that such a vivid, marvellous text was written during the 11th century. Daisy Hildyard pays homage to the holly, the most beautiful symbol of winter, and Damian Le Bas writes about mistletoe, Cornwall and the New Travellers while Virginia Woolf describes London during winter in a haunting passage during one of the most important scenes in Orlando.

‘’It was an evening of astonishing beauty. As the sun sank, all the domes, spires, turrets, and pinnacles of London rose in inky blackness against the furious red sunset clouds. Here was the fretted cross at Charing; there like a grove of trees stripped of all leaves save a knob at the end were the heads on the pikes at Temple Bar.’’
Virginia Woolf

In Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov’s extract from The Kolyma Tales, a prisoner in a gulag in the Arctic region outsmarts a brutish guard and Marchelle Farrell writes a haunting piece about Yule and exhaustion.

‘’I am tired. What a dream it would be to rest until the first signs of spring. I take my cue from the garden, die back where I can, keep growing where I must. I love my dreams of the garden - it grows within the now, shows itself even when I am not in it. There is such comfort in being so rooted. I wonder if the garden dreams now of me.’’
Marchelle Farrell

Vincent Van Gogh takes an evening walk across the heath, during a storm and Dorothy Pilley writes about the treacherous mountains of Spain and resilient guides. Tim Dee’s words paint a beautiful image of the moor during dusk, while Charlotte Du Cann transports from the scorching heat of Greece to the northern winter through a profound encounter with a figure from times unknown.

‘’Dusk on the winter solstice: the shortest day and longest night of the year. I was cold and alone on a track on the Somerset Levels, looking towards the dying light in the west. Moving across the sky in front of me, like the breath of the earth, were thousands of birds - starlings arriving to roost, to put away their day, and so too, on this day, the year.’’
Tim Dee

Elizabeth - Jane Burnett narrates a meteor shower in Devon in a mesmerizing voice and Sarah Thomas brings this beautiful collection to an end with her hymn to cold nights in the Arctic.

‘’I stand out in the wide night. An owl hoots from further down the field. The grey cloud moves under the moon like smoke from a fire. When it clears, the brilliance is intense. It is like nothing else. As I gaze up, I see three stars in a row on a diagonal under it: Orion’s Belt. I wonder if I’m seeing any planets.’’
Elizabeth - Jane Burnett

I could have underlined every page of this gem. Nancy Campbell is an outstanding writer and a phenomenal editor. This volume must find a place in your collection.

‘’The heartbeat slows, the chimney smokes, the stars fall. The enchanted month in the castle came to a close, and I tidied my desk and climbed the library ladder to return books to their places on the shelves. As I gathered up my sheaf of papers, I looked forward to returning home. The remaining nights of winter might be dark and cold and damp, but now I was listening for the call of the blackbird. I awaited the first snowdrops, with hope.’’
Nancy Campbell

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