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.
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