After my beloved wife and daughter, one of the people who has most helped me to survive the madness of this past year is Melissa Harrison. Although we’ve never met in person, hearing her gentle and soothing voice asking me “Hi, how’re you doing?” at the beginning of each episode of her superb The Stubborn Light of Things podcast has more times than I can recall helped me to pick up and carry on in the face of all that was wearing me down. For this I don’t know that I shall ever be able to thank her sufficiently.
As many of you may know – and for the edification of any who might not yet – in addition to her writing of three novels, a delightful small volume of four essays about walking in English weather titled appropriately enough Rain, and the editing of a quartet of four volumes of seasonally organized nature-themed essays and verses published by Elliott & Thompson that I have adopted as something akin to a source of daily scriptural readings, Ms Harrison has for years written the “Nature Notebook” column in The Times.
In 2020, Faber & Faber had the commendable good sense and taste to publish a collection of these last mentioned essays also under the title The Stubborn Light of Things. Readers in the UK have been able to acquire this gem of a book from fine booksellers in that country since late last summer, and soon readers in the US will also be able to enjoy it as well (this coming April, if my sources are correct).
If you’re in the UK and you haven’t already bought a copy, please do so now (just trust me on this one); and if you’re in the US, put your name down for a copy at the earliest opportunity. And as we’ve all still got a long way to go until we’re through this madness, download her podcasts as well – they truly can help.
