Canton, James – The Bell Bookshop

Renaturing

Emma — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Twenty years ago, James Canton moved from London to the English countryside. Behind his farm labourer’s cottage was a small field with a ‘for sale’ sign. At first it was a site for family picnics and cricket matches with friends, but James knew that the two-acre patch of earth held more potential – as a place for nature to return and flourish.

Here is the story of how, over a number of years, he undertook a project to ‘rewild’ the field: digging a pond, forging meadowlands, creating habitats for birds and insects, encouraging flowers and plants that support pollinators and wildlife. Eventually what was once just a grassy space was again buzzing with life.

The process raised some interesting questions. Rewilding is about bringing a large landscape back to a natural, self-sustaining state. But that wasn’t possible on the scale of a field, a garden or a window box. What if we rethought the term? What if we aimed for ‘renaturing’ instead? Even on the smallest of scales we can create habitats to support a greater diversity of nature. A single window box planted with pollinator-friendly flowers can provide a mini-habitat to support honeybees; a tower block with a window box on every balcony becomes an acre of bee-friendly ecosystem.

Renaturing shows how the concept of rewilding can be adopted by us all. We can all make positive change, however large or small. We can all be involved in caring for and restoring the natural world.

Grounded

Emma — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

For thousands of years, our ancestors held a close connection with the landscapes they lived in. They imbued it with meaning: stone monuments, sacred groves, places of pilgrimage. In our modern world we have rather lost that enchantment and intimate knowledge of place. James Canton takes us on a journey through England seeking to see through more ancient eyes, to understand what landscape meant to those that came before us. We visit stone circles, the West Kennet long barrow, a Crusader round church and sites of religious visions. We meet the Dagenham Idol and the intricately carved Lion Man figure. We find artefacts buried in farmers' fields. There is history and meaning encoded into the lands and places we live in, if only we take the time to look.

Grounded

Emma — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

James Canton takes us on a journey through England seeking to see through more ancient eyes, to understand what landscape meant to those that came before us. We visit stone circles, the West Kennet long barrow, a Crusader round church and sites of religious visions. We meet the Dagenham Idol and the intricately carved Lion Man figure. We find artefacts buried in farmers’ fields. There is history and meaning encoded into the lands and places we live in, if only we take the time to look.

Our natural world has never been under more threat. If we relocate our sense of wonder, veneration and awe in the landscapes we live in, we might just be better at saving it.

The Oak Papers

Emma — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

‘Some five years ago, I sought solace from the ways of the world by stepping into the embrace of an ancient oak tree . . . From the first meeting, there grew a strange sense of attachment I did not consciously recognise until I later began to realise the significance that trees, and oak trees especially, can have in our lives.’

James Canton spent two years sitting with and studying the Honywood Oak. A colossus of a tree, it would have been a sapling when Magna Carta was signed. Initially visiting the tree for escape and solitude, in time he learns to study it more closely. He examines how our long-standing dependency on oak trees has developed and morphed into myth and legend.

The Oak Papers is a stunning, meditative and healing book about the lessons we can learn from the natural world, if only we slow down enough to listen.