Interview with Samantha Walton, author of Everybody Needs Beauty : In Search of the Nature Cure
Samantha Walton, author of Everybody Needs Beauty : In Search of the Nature Cure recommends some excellent books! Before jumping into the interview, please check out Samantha's book:
Review from Book Depository:
Everybody is talking about the healing properties of nature. Hospitals are being retrofitted with gardens, and forests reimagined as wellbeing centres. On the Shetland Islands, it is possible to walk into a doctor's surgery with anxiety or depression, and walk out with a prescription for nature.
(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Everybody Needs Beauty : In Search of the Nature Cure
Where has this come from, and what does 'going to nature' mean? Where is it - at the end of a garden, beyond the tarmac fringes of a city, at the summit of a mountain? Drawing on history, science, literature and art, Samantha Walton shows that the nature cure has deep roots - but, as we face an unprecedented crisis of mental health, social injustice and environmental devastation, the search for it is more urgent now than ever.
Everybody Needs Beauty engages seriously with the connection between nature and health, while scrutinising the harmful trends of a wellness industry that seeks to exploit our relationship with the natural world. In doing so, this book explores how the nature cure might lead us towards a more just and radical way of life: a real means of recovery, for people, society and nature.
Buy On:
Easons €23.79
Book Depository €10.94
Waterstones £9.99
Wordery $11.75
Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?
I read The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture 1830-1980 by Elaine Showalter when I was studying at university and it profoundly shaped the course of my studies, my writing and my understanding of how mental health is shaped by social oppression. It has everything: feminism revisionist history, super smart readings of psychiatric literature, and a critical account of medical misogyny that has dismissed women’s protest and women’s suffering for centuries.
Review From Book Depository:
In this informative, timely and often harrowing study, Elaine Showalter demonstrates how cultural ideas about 'proper' feminine behaviour have shaped the definition and treatment of female insanity for 150 years, and given mental disorder in women specifically sexual connotations. Along with vivid portraits of the men who dominated psychiatry, and descriptions of the therapeutic practices that were used to bring women 'to their senses', she draws on diaries and narratives by inmates, and fiction from Mary Wollstonecraft to Doris Lessing, to supply a cultural perspective usually missing from studies of mental illness.
(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture 1830-1980
Highly original and beautifully written, The Female Malady is a vital counter-interpretation of madness in women, showing how it is a consequence of, rather than a deviation from, the traditional female role.
Buy On:
Easons €20.99
Book Depository €12.23
Waterstones £14.99
Wordery $13.17
Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?
I’ve just finished reading Bad Gays (Verso 2022) by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller. It evolved from a podcast which tells the unsavoury stories of bad gays from history. What the book does so well is take a simple, engaging idea and use it to unpack complex themes in queer theory, like the debates between social constructivist and essentialist accounts of sexuality, the value of representation for marginalised communities, how changing understandings of sex led to the formation of modern queer identities, and the importance of intersectionality in the contemporary LGBTQ* movement.
Review From Book Depository:
Too many popular histories seek to establish heroes, pioneers and martyrs but as Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller argue, the past is filled with queer people whose sexualities and/or dastardly deeds have been overlooked. We all remember Oscar Wilde, but who speaks for Bosie? What about those 'bad gays' whose un-exemplary lives reveals more than we might expect?
(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Bad Gays: A Homosexual History
Part-revisionist history, part-historical biography and based on the hugely popular podcast series, Bad Gays subverts the notion of gay icons and queer heroes and asks what we can learn about LGBTQ history, sexuality and identity through its villains and baddies. From the Emperor Hadrian to notorious gangster Ronnie Kray, the authors excavate the buried history of queer lives. This includes fascist thugs, famous artists, austere puritans and debauched bon viveurs, Imperialists, G-men and architects. Together these amazing life stories expand and challenge the mainstream assumptions of sexual identity. They show that homosexuality itself was an idea that emerged in the nineteenth century and that its interpretation has been central to major historical moments of conflict from the ruptures of Weimar Republic to red-baiting in Cold War America.
Amusing, disturbing and fascinating, Bad Gays puts centre stage the queers villains and evil twinks in history.
Buy On:
Book Depository €19.54
Waterstones £17.99
Wordery $19.24
Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?
I was a very ignorant child and spent most of my time playing Nintendo, tearing around the neighbourhood on my bike, climbing trees or staying up late begging my parents to let me watch Poirot. I didn’t read any of the childhood classics, but I was a big fan of horror and crime series like Goosebumps and Point Crime. These all blur into one though, so I’ve picked Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, which I first read in my early teens. It’s an ideal book for an introverted teenager obsessed with mystery, unhinged emotions and the darker side of nature.
Review From Book Depository:
In a house haunted by memories, the past is everywhere ...
(All links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Wuthering Heights
As darkness falls, a man caught in a snowstorm is forced to shelter at the strange, grim house Wuthering Heights. It is a place he will never forget. There he will come to learn the story of Cathy: how she was forced to choose between her well-meaning husband and the dangerous man she had loved since she was young. How her choice led to betrayal and terrible revenge - and continues to torment those in the present. How love can transgress authority, convention, even death.
Buy On:
Easons €16.49
Book Depository €15.02
Waterstones £14.99
Wordery $14.99
Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?
I only read on paper, which is very bad for my home storage situation and my bookshelves. I have a very good memory for where lines and passages are in physical books, and I find when I listen or read on Kindle it’s hard for me to remember what I have read. I’m very glad e-reading and audiobooks are so widely available now though, as they’re making reading so much more accessible.
Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?
I’m spoilt in Bristol with so many good indie bookshops: Book Haus, Max Minerva’s, Gloucester Road Books, Stanfords and Storysmith all have distinct identities and an amazing range. Further afield, I would have to pick Lighthouse Bookshop in Edinburgh. They are a queer, feminist, antiracist community space who give incredible support to writers and indie presses and stock a diverse range of books.
Many thanks to Samantha for recommending some excellent books! Please don't forget to check out Samantha's book Everybody Needs Beauty : In Search of the Nature Cure.
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (Everybody Needs Beauty), Little, Brown Book Group (The Female Malady), Verso Books (Bad Gays), Penguin Books Ltd (Wuthering Heights).
< Home
