The Sacred Combe: A Search for Humanity's Heartland

Reflections on the natural world and our place within it from one of our finest natural history writers – nature writing at its very best.

We've all got one. A secret, special place. Hidden. Enclosed. A little greener and more fertile than the world outside. Here the birds are slightly more exotic, slightly more confiding, the grass greener and the fruit sweeter. To know such a place, to love such a place, is part of being human.

Sometimes it's a place of myth, like the Garden of Eden. Somet...