The Lost Rainforests of Britain

In 2020, Guy Shrubsole moved from London to Devon. As he began to explore the wooded valleys, rivers and tors of Dartmoor, he discovered an extraordinary habitat that he had never come across before: temperate rainforest. Entranced, he would spend the coming months exploring and researching the history and distribution of rainforest in the British Isles. Britain, Guy discovered, was once a rainforest nation.

This is the story of a unique habitat that has become so denuded and fragmented, most people today don't realise it exists. Britain's rainforests have been lost from both the landscape and from cultural memory, yet fragments of them remain and continue to permeate our culture in forgotten ways. Featuring trespassing botanists, Welsh wizards, lichen geeks, Sherlock Holmes, Romantic poets and Celtic druids, The Lost Rainforests of Britain takes the reader from the Atlantic hazelwoods and oakwoods of the Western Highlands, down through the Lake District, parts of the Peak District, Wales and into Devon and Cornwall, and shows how they might be restored to the places they once were.

A beautifully spun detective story, The Lost Rainforests of Britain is an unforgettable chronicle of our land – its past, present and future – as we have never before encountered it.