Nicola Chester

Nicola Chester has lived her whole life in homes within 15 miles of each other, in Berkshire. This area has had a history of rebellion by the under-represented. John Clare wrote his poetry here. The Civil War had bitter battles here Tenants throughout the centuries rebelled against their landowner masters. It's where Greenham Common, site of the women's peace camps, and Newbury Bypass, a much fought-over project which destroyed so much natural and rural history when against the odds, it was built are sited near her homes. Chester has been a tenant all her life, and understands powerlessness. She also understands the natural world, and deepening her understanding of it, spending time in it with her family, particularly her children, is her salvation. Her battles change to doing her part to save the natural world. She has her nature writing accepted by the RSPB, the Guardian, her local paper, and this becomes part of her fight. She writes with lyricism and passion, describing the seasons, the creatures that form part of her day-to-day environment with incisive, poetic words and concludes 'Anyone could make a place their home by engaging with its nature'. A book to read slowly, and to savour.… (more)