Published 2025. Paperback, 88pp, 8 x 8 ins, £12.95 / $20
ISBN 9781848619883 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

Black Fens Viral began in summer 2020 when I was recovering from Covid. Lockdown was lifting and I was able to travel to Norfolk on the slow train which goes through the Black Fens of East Anglia. This flat, almost hedgeless and treeless, agricultural landscape of black peat was once marshland, before the drainage of the fens. The first sluice was created by the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden in 1642 to limit the tidal flow up the Great Ouse, but he did not realise that the peat would shrink after it dried out and be blown away by the wind. We now know that it also adds to global warming through leaking carbon dioxide and means the risk of flooding is more acute than ever.

I often write about landscapes I love, such as Exmoor or the north Norfolk coast, protected by national parks and nature reserves, but I needed to write about this damaged landscape, where plants are exploited and biodiversity ignored. It corresponded to the damage caused by the pandemic, a result of human incursions into wild places. Writing about the Black Fens also brought back memories of my childhood in Lincolnshire. Depopulated by mechanised agriculture, it was a lonely landscape, as well as an ecological disaster. (Frances Presley)

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