In a dark forest

In his mid-forties Will Ashon realised he was adrift and confused, confronted by the situation Dante described in the Divine Comedy: ‘In the middle of our life’s path/ I found myself in a dark forest.’

Ashon’s dark forest was metaphorical to begin with — conscious of ageing, dis-satisfied with his career in the music industry, wondering where to turn — but it became literal as he sought answers by exploring Epping Forest, the vast ‘shadow of London’ near his home in Walthamstow. Strange Labyrinth takes its title from a beguiling sonnet by the Jacobean author Lady Mary Wroth, who lived at nearby Loughton Hall, and charts Ashon’s twisting, sometimes perplexing but, by the end, deeply satisfying exploration of the intellectual terrain covered by artists, writers and performers who share a connection to this place.

The result is a book that’s hard to classify. First impressions might place it within the ‘new nature writing’, but it is more a cultural than a natural history, and one with remarkable scope, unconstrained by boundaries of genre or style. Which, we come to realise, is precisely the point. This is a book about enclosure, in its every sense, from the land enclosures that tormented the poet John Clare, who spent years in an asylum here, to the psychic enclosures that preoccupy Penny Rimbaud of the punk band Crass. Rimbaud lives by the forest in the evocatively described Dial House and emerges as one of the book’s most interesting characters.

It’s a clever piece of work, a joy and an education. It comes as no surprise to learn that more than half of the Brothers Grimm’s 210 fairy tales are set in forests, drawing from the landscape’s allegorical possibilities; think of the abandoned Hansel and Gretel seeking a way home but becoming lost and confused and succumbing to temptation on seeing the witch’s cottage.