Festival Event: Sara Hudston - a Life Outside: Hope Bourne on Exmoor

Hope Bourne (1918-2010) was one of the twentieth century's most extraordinary nature writers.

Forgotten for many years, Bourne's life and work is now being rediscovered by a new generation of readers, who are increasingly enthralled by her writing and ideas.Fiercely self-reliant, Hope Bourne lived alone in a series of remote and ramshackle cottages and caravans on Exmoor in Somerset without electricity or mains water.

She survived by growing vegetables, shooting for the pot, and reusing and recycling things that others threw away.Her unconventional, outdoor life gave her freedom to write, draw and paint.

Her remarkable ecological awareness, rejection of materialism, and close relationship with the natural world were decades ahead of their time - in 1972 she wrote the UK's first, impassioned plea for rewilding, a vision that encompassed people as well as wildlife.A Life Outside is the first biography of her life and work.

Sympathetic, critical and honest, it draws on detailed original research in The Exmoor Society's archive and interviews with people who knew her well.In addition to the chapters on Bourne's life, the book contains a generous selection of extracts from the weekly local newspaper column she wrote for the West Somerset Free Press, which have never been republished before.

Among the best of Bourne's writing, these short pieces reveal her daily life on Exmoor and her exceptional connection to nature."A masterpiece of detective work.The story is beautifully told and relentlessly fascinating." Charles Foster