Richard Mabey is one of Britain’s leading writers on the natural world and our place in it, as well as a veteran broadcaster with more awards and experience to his name than I can list here. So it was mildly surreal to find myself chatting with him about the time he stole a rare rose from Merton College garden to give to his then girlfriend for her exams.

Richard’s new book, ‘The Cabaret of Plants’, a fantastic book exploring the wonders of the botanical world: “I wouldn’t call it ‘magical’”, Mabey says, “but modern botanical science is revealing the vegetal to be a universe matching the wildest dreams of fantasists.” As the conversation continues I get the strange ense of entering a deep wood, or one of the countless, wild heaths that Mabey explores in his books on the natural world: from discussion about his new work we are soon talking about our relation on the world around us, and about the history of ‘nature writing’ itself. As well as the style of nature writing that attracts the media by meditation on the self through the world around us, Mabey explains, there are many other nuances that can be seen throughout history: “the idea that this is something new or sparked off by a peculiarly modern environmental angst doesn’t bear historical analysis.” From postwar urban disillusionment in the 20s and 30s to fictionalized exploration in Forster and Woolf, right back to the 16^th century via Thoreau and Emerson in America – it seems Mabey’s writings are just the fringes of a forest which is riddled with pathways and tracks, stretching back through time.

But even if the path of nature writing has been trodden before, Mabey’s writing always seems new, original and absorbing, with a voice of urgency that demands our ears. “I believe the current fad for regarding nature as a kind of complementary medicine , a green Prozac,  is rife with problems”, he argues, “not least the over -simplification of a parallel world that is as full of pain, loss, and hidden transactions as it is of beauty.” The view that nature is there for our benefit, he tells me, has to stop. “I don’t believe the natural world “answers” people’s problems at all – an intense attention and respect for it can heighten our understanding of the experience and terms of living on the Earth.” These messages are important for all of us: when Mabey speaks, we really should listen.

But as well as his strong messages about the world around us, Mabey writes with a poetry, a lyricism, that entices you onwards. When I mention his literary focus on certain areas such as the Norfolk Broads, Mabey explains how, despite his strong love for these regions, he is ‘habitat-promiscuous’: ‘I’m apt to develop crushes wherever I go.” You don’t need to go to the Cairngorms for wilderness, Oxford students will be pleased to know – the marvels of plant life can be experienced in a square inch of vegetation. “I once watched a tuft of lichen for an hour under a microscope, and found a dynamic miniature forest, with the lichen having its own fungal flora and minute insect herbivores grazing among the stalks.” This wonder and joy that oozes from his writing is infectious – as Mabey explains, the overriding incentive is to successfully enthuse himself. “If you can pull this off, and convey it, there is a chance it may be contagious.” It is certainly catching.

And Richard Mabey doesn’t just talk about new approaches to nature: as well as presenting numerous essays on the radio he sat on the Nature Conservancy Council in the 1980s. And it his actions seem to be working – Mabey talks hopefully of a sea-change in our attitudes to the world around us. “Because of the astonishing recent discoveries about plant senses, communication and intelligence, which are reviving their status as active beings, subjects in their own life stories.” We are connected with nature whether we like it or not – by evolution, kinship, ecological co-dependency, and “the simple fact that we breathe in what the plant world breathes out.” Reaching a greater acknowledgement and understanding of this is the challenge.

And what of the much-repeated news that certain ‘nature’ words taken out of the Oxford Junior Dictionary? “My own experience over many years suggests that young people reach this by immersion in the feral, more than being taught to tell a burnet moth from a cinnabar. Since our distinctive identity as a species in the biosphere is as language and symbol users, this can come about as much through literature and art as through ‘real’ experience.” There is as much wilderness in the Bodleian as in the unexplored lands beyond Jericho: we just need to open our books and find it.

When I mention his time studying at St. Catz, Richard Mabey tells me how, “unfashionably, I had a great time in Oxford.” Although nature took a back seat for a while as he got involved in radical politics, Mabey now loves exploring the green, hidden corners of (as he called it in an essay) ‘the city of greening spires’. Magdalen’s meadows and watery walks, the Botanical gardens (“and the heartening way the archway entrance just misses lining up with Magdalen Tower as the architect intended – the wild card wins again!”), the extraordinary flora of the old wall north of Christchurch Meadow, and Corpus’ garden’s  eccentric medieval mix of flowers and veg. Not to mention a bit of eco-slumming the lanes and canals round Jericho. It seems the wild is here, in Oxford- we just need to go out and find it.

Owen Sheers has appeared many times in my life. First in my A Level English class, with his poetry ‘Skirrid Hill’ – then on top of a windy mountain in the Brecon Beacons, as my expedition leader shouted through the wind that I should read his book Resistance – “it’s really good, all about these places.” So it seemed fitting that when I first spoke to Sheers about his new book I Saw A Man, it almost felt as if we’d picked up from somewhere we’d left off. Over a crackly speaker he apologised for his daughter crying in the background – “we often don’t get a good line out here.”

Sheers has a career so varied and innovative you’d think it was written itself. From staging his work Pink Mist, a verse-drama about three soldiers in Afghanistan, to screen plays, via radio and film, there isn’t much he hasn’t experimented with (and that includes spending three days in CERN writing an oratorio in response to Haydn, by the way). But now Sheers has turned his attention to a new challenge – a carefully crafted novel which explores grief, loss and desire. I Saw A Man is written with a complex temporal structure, playing with narrative and convention to create a thriller that pulls the reader along on Michael’s journey through his nieghbours’ house. It’s an effective technique, and the real skill is that, on first reading, it seems merely a gripping, conventional read. “I don’t want to show the scaffolding too much,” Sheers says, “if it reads easily, then it’s successful.” Using the interesting technique of immersion journalism to research and structure the book, Sheers admits he dumped the first 10,000 words three times – “it was a bit of a psychological kick in the teeth.”

But, somewhat paradoxically, Sheers is used to trying out new formats and tackling complex ideas. His love for winding the past and present together in his writing can be seen in ‘Mametz’, a staged world war one production where the audience are unwittingly involved, literally coming out of the trenches, and with the actors wearing contemporary uniform. This use of the past as a prism to “examine contemporary situations” surfaces again and again – I discover that the guerrilla warfare in the 1940s novel Resistance was a comment on the Iraq War – completely missed by my 16 year old self.

“It’s the ideas, the concepts and the stories that attract me first,” Sheers says – then you look for new, unique, exciting ways to tell them. This versatility also allows for certain perks – such as becoming writer in residence for the Welsh Rugby Union. I could almost hear Sheers grin over the phone when I asked how much he, as a rugby fan, had enjoyed that commission. However, he reassured me that there were other reasons for the subsequent book, Calon: it was an attempt to bring together physical and intellectual life, to “introduce sports fans to literature, and vice versa.” Always pushing boundaries, Sheers is not only trying to combine sports and literary journalism but also trying to make us bookworms pick up a rugby ball – a major challenge indeed.

Despite having recently become professor of Creative Writing at Swansea University, Sheers is careful to say that he feels his first duty is to himself as a writer. “After I Saw A Man I plan to stop for a while – to let the creative reservoirs fill up again.” However, he is by no means isolating himself from society. He explains how he’s currently spending a lot of time in Aberfan, writing a piece on the 1966 mining disaster there. Contact with the ‘real world’ is vital, he explains, to gain the full spectrum of people’s stories: “It is important to keep the truth at heart and at the centre of your material.” His work is also taking him out along the Gower coast, designing a literary work to exist both online with film-work and in a companion exhibition designed so the visitor can walk the shoreline either way. “It’s going back to basics but it’s also modern,” Sheers chuckles.

I ask him whether he is happy with the title ‘war poet’, and his voice suddenly loses its wry tone. “I never set out to write about conflict,” Sheers says. “it just runs parallel with my writing life”. And it’s true – Afghanistan, Iraq, 9/11 – all of these horrors occurred around the time of Sheers’ publications. The fact that they are tackled in his work reflects not a fascination, but an attempt to analyse the current situation. Sheers wrote a play The Two Worlds of Charlie F as a recovery project for wounded service personnel and their families, and with the leftover material constructed Pink Mist. Drone strikes are prevalent in I Saw A Man because they are relevant to our current lives. “Everyone can write war poetry now,” Sheers says. “We need to broaden our idea of what conflict poetry is. The view is very set, and needs to change.”

This sums up my experience with Owen Sheers – he is shaking up the literary world with new forms and ideas, and is a credit to Oxford (a New College graduate, if you’re interested). His new novel I Saw A Man is fantastic – I look forward to seeing what on earth he tackles next. 

★★★★☆

As we recover from the excesses of Christmas and draw close to the excesses of awards season, stripped back “survival Western” The Revenant is surely tipped as a front runner for several gongs. An acclaimed director in Alejandro G. Iñárritu (hot off the tails of last year’s outsider success Birdman) and a cast of established and up-and-coming stars, led by Leonardo DiCaprio, have made sure of that.

The production of the film is almost as epic as the plot itself. Filmed sequentially using only natural lighting and minimal computer generated effects, the story of Hugh Glass (DiCaprio), a 19^th century fur trapper in Louisiana who is near-fatally mauled by a bear, and his survival in the barren wilderness full of hostile Native Americans, took 9 months to film and its original budget ballooned from $60 million to a reported $135 million. But then, as Iñárritu pointed out in an interview, “Nobody will go to a film because the guys were on schedule and on budget. It’s how good the film is”.

So, how good is it? Commitment to character from the cast all round on what must have been a gruelling shoot merits great praise. In particular DiCaprio’s teeth-gritting tenacity and near mute performance is truly gripping and may well win him the Academy Award for Best Actor he has, so far, thrice been nominated for. That said, I doubt that many of the trials in the film required much in the way of acting to evoke a response; his willingness to jump in and out of shatteringly icy cold rivers again and again is remarkable alone. Tom Hardy’s scalped trapper with a big fat chip on his shoulder and Domhnall Gleeson’s dedicated captain are also dependably solid.

In fact, with long stretches spent following DiCaprio through his seven circles of North American hell, I felt more time could have been spent developing the ensemble characters. A prime example of this is Jim Bridger, a young huntsman played by rising star Will Poulter, whose character arc felt about as filled in as his endearing bum-fluff moustache.

The theme of isolation is evoked in many ways in this film: the use of negative space (the sky all but fills many shots), the lack of lines for DiCaprio (his script must have mainly read ‘he grunts’ or ‘he breathes’) and the prominent position that the wind takes in the soundscape are some. However, the use of silence in the score is one of the most effective. The pared back score of experimental Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto points at the hunters’ isolation and heightens the tension throughout the film, slowly building suspense through brooding drawn-out chord progressions on sorrowful strings.

Filmed with natural light, and not always much of it, the off white snow, dirty green and brown forests and steel blue skies (think the colours of a trendy IKEA lounge) are captured beautifully and the cinematography suggests both wilderness and abandonment. The frozen wastes of the North American and Argentinian mountains and forests that here double as Montana and South Dakota put the strength and majesty of nature at the fore. Heavy use of low angle shots reinforces both the sense of scale and solitude and makes the icy skies and tall firs show stealing characters in their own right.

(The sheer number of low angle shots does, however, mean that you see up the characters’ noses an awful lot. With sub-zero temperatures this adds a layer of frozen snotty realism that I could have done without.)

Having shunned computer effects for the most part (except for the bear attack, one hopes) the visceral practical effects (think blood, guts and gore galore) are particularly effective and there are plenty of don’t-want-to-look but can’t-look-away moments. Red blood on white snow provides a shocking and striking contrast as we’ve seen before in films such as Fargo and as I’m sure we will see again in Quentin Tarantino’s next outing, The Hateful Eight.

A film that takes itself as deadly seriously as this one does run the risk of becoming bloated. Iñárritu has managed to stay on the right side of dull, but some choice edits would have tightened the film. In particular, some of the multiple flashbacks underlining Glass’s past feel superfluous. However, any sins committed by the length of the film are made up for by the sheer edge of the seat excitement during the action sequences (and there are plenty) that break it up.

Overall, The Revenant is a stressful, hard-hitting, stomach-turning and emotionally taxing film where everything that can go wrong does. I’d urge you to see it.

‘The Revenant’ is in cinemas from the 15^th January.