Reading List

an archive of texts with which I’ve been swimming, nourishing my mind and informing my work

Justin Fox ‘Place : South African Literary Journeys’ (2023)

An interesting accompaniment to an end of year cross country road trip which visited many new parts of the country to me and made me see history, culture and our relationship to the land through quite different eyes.

Barbara Kingsolver ‘The Poisonwood Bible’ (1998)

A deeply poignant book which made me think deeply about our relationship to land, forms of power and dominion over psyche, myth, culture and nature. Central themes of religion, education, extractive industry and commodity agriculture resonated deeply as I traveled across the country, experiencing different cultures, landscapes and modes of interrelation, rich food for thought and soul

James Hillman ‘The Soul’s Code’ (1996)

Elif Shafak ‘There are rivers in the Sky’ (2024)

A beautifully crafted tale which weaves together mythology and hard reality through the theme of the memory of water, it travels the earliest cuneform texts to contemporary realities and hardships through the interweaving of women and rivers

Abraham Verghese ‘The Covenant’ (2023)

A powerful epic which tracks the multigenerational unwinding of myth into meaning through the expansion of communication, understanding, education and technology while tracking a deeply intimate unfolding of the repercussions of culture and individual desire

Madeline Miller ‘Circe’ (2018)

Robert McFarlane ‘Is A River Alive?’ (2025)

The latest of what is always a phenomenal story by Robert Mcfarlane. In this one he traces the the story of rivers, through myth, culture, histroy, geography and ecology while simultaneously taking the physical journey himself.

Tara Westcott ‘Educated: A memoir’ (2018)

A beautiful, gripping novel about psyche, religious fanaticism, mental illness, structures of control and psychic liberation hard won through a difficult expansion of perspective and possibility.

Carl Jung 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections'

Joseph Campbell 'The Hero’s Journey' | A Biography on the life, work and mythology of Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell "The Ecstasy of Being: Mythology and Dance'Glen Adamson 'Fewer Better Things'

Satish Kumar ‘Elegant Simplicity’ (2019)

“Elegant Simplicity provides a coherent philosophy of life that weaves together simplicity of material life, thought, and spirit. In it, Satish Kumar, environmental thought leader and former monk, distills five decades of reflection and wisdom into a guide for everyone”

E.F. Schumacher 'Small is Beautiful: A study of Economics as if people mattered" (1973)

The seminal text by the author after whom the Schumacher institute in Dartmoor was named which deconstructs the true meaning, purpose and sense of economic systems.

Jason Hickel 'Less is More: How degrowth will save the world' (2020)

Deeply moving work presenting alternative economic systems which would prioritize wellbeing of people, community and ecology

Oliver Franklin-Wallis "Wasteland" (2023)

A deeply moving book which exposes the reality of material waste, from domestic recycling to the industry & international trade of waste processing as well as highlighting the pre-consumer waste produced before we even begin to comprehend the products of our reality as existent, let alone waste.

Jennifer Higgie 'The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World’ (2023)

an inspiring overview of spirituality in art, the development of spirituality in the west and the different reception of work produced by men & women on the theme