Where her first book was written “trapped inside the walls” of personal grief, her new collection of essays, Vesper Flights, is a lamentation for the world itself. As in her writing, she expresses herself in easy metaphors (grief is a “submarine”), her conversation a lively tumble of anecdotes, enthusiasm and facts. But, she continues, “writing about love means you are also writing about death. It is really hard to write about the natural world without writing about grief.” The world has changed scarily since H Is for Hawk was published, and she felt it was no longer possible to write a book about “voles plashing through the fens”. A few years ago, she was commissioned to write a radio play called Through the Wire – “It was terrible!

Source: The Guardian August 21, 2020 06:00 UTC