The grass below, above, the vaulted sky

It was soon after he finished work on Flora Britannica, his hugely successful book about the wild plants he had spent his life exploring, that Richard Mabey fell ill. It began as a nagging feeling of ‘ill- fittedness’, being out of kilter with his surroundings, and with the loss of all taste and hunger for work. An author and naturalist with a string of memorable and excellent books behind him, he simply ran out of words. By the time he was diagnosed as suffering from severe depression he had fallen out with his much loved sister, sold the family home, and was spending most of his time, when not in hospital or drinking in the pub, lying curled up on his bed facing the wall.

Nature Cure, Mabey’s account of his illness and the gradual climb back to feeling at ease again, is more an essay, a disquisition on the relationship between man and nature, than a foray into the insidious workings of a depressive illness. The facts are recounted in just a few words — no response to drugs or therapy, then a serendipitous rescue by friends, a slow noticing of the East Anglian countryside in which he had taken refuge, and a happy encounter with a woman he would eventually share his life with. On doctors and conventional treatment Mabey has little to say beyond a few polite but incredulous sentences about the absurdity of ever imagining that discussing or understanding an illness of this kind could ever ‘make the hard-wiring that caused it’ disappear.

This brief explanation over, Mabey returns to the real themes of his book. Just as East Anglia was sinking under freezing December winds, Mabey agreed to house-sit a couple of wary cats for a friend who spent her working week in London.