February - A Book of Silence

Following our winter break this will be the first walk and talk of 2023...

The stillness of midwinter naturally bestows a sense of silence when out walking, permitting time for contemplation but the Christmas festivities can also make it one of the most noisy and hectic moments of the year, so we thought let's welcome the new year with a little silence, and perhaps slow the pace in a bid that 2023 is less of a whirlwind and we can treasure each season more attentively...

A BOOK OF SILENCE

by SARA MAITLAND

After a noisy upbringing as one of six children, and adulthood as a vocal feminist and mother, Sara Maitland began to crave silence.  She has spent periods of silence in the Sinai Desert and the Australian bush and on the Isle of Skye, and she interweaves these experiences with the history of silence told through fairy tale and myth, Western and Eastern religious traditions, the Enlightenment and psychoanalysis, up to the ambivalence towards silence in contemporary society. Maitland has built a hermitage on an isolated Scottish moor, and the book culminates powerfully with her experiences of silence in this new home.

'A Book of Silence grapples with ideas at the very heart of what it is to be human, and Sara Maitland is a joyous champion of the countercultural notion that silence is more than simply an absence of noise' - The Times

'Maitland's experience has been rich and thorough, and deeply enviable. Her book is probably unique in its subject, and timely, because good, healing silence is becoming hard to find, and we may not know we need it' - Guardian

Also by the author and available from Seven Fables, Gossip from the Forest.

We look forward to welcoming you to the woodland paths and riverside walks of Dulverton...

BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL - Please see ticket options below

WELL BEHAVED DOGS ARE WELCOME ON THIS WALK

A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland RRP £9.99

Published by Granta Books 2009

Number of pages - 320 198 x 129 x 20 mm