To welcome in the joys of spring with glorious sunshine we were delighted to welcome on World Book Day award-winning author and university lecturer Dr Michael Malay, who was joined in conversation by the Bookery’s ‘resident’ interviewer Alison Sweatman.

From Alison’s carefully prepared questions we learnt the importance to Michael of relationships and connections. It was fascinating to hear about his childhood growing up in Jakarta, before moving to Australia where he experienced a completely different culture with his first day of school reminding him of Appleyard College, the school in the Picnic at Hanging Rock film. Before moving to live and teach at Bristol University he explained that he had no experience of the four amazing creatures that feature so prominently within Late Light, but that by studying them he had become fascinated by them. He confessed that the eels were probably his favourite of the four creatures and described the incredible migrations that eels undertake travelling over 3,000 miles both at the beginning of their lives and after they become sexually active 20 years later. Michael illustrated the discussion with a series of thought-provoking quotations including ‘the smallest windows have the largest views’ to explain that the microscopic is connected to the macroscopic. We really enjoyed listening to Michael reading a passage from his book in which he describes his fascination with moths, including setting up a campfire and white bedsheet in Leigh Woods near Bristol and explaining that moths are disrupted by light not attracted to it. In his captivating style we were asked if we had lost the art of looking and suggested that by not noticing that we move faster and need to consider slowness as a ‘radical act.’

Winner of the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2024 and Winner of the Richard Jefferies Award for Nature Writing 2023, Late Light is a beautifully written examination of the state of the English countryside through the close regard of four of its creatures – eels, moths, freshwater mussels and crickets – and discusses a new way of living with our animal neighbours. This is a book about falling in love with vanishing things. Late Light is about migration, belonging and extinction and is the story of Michael Malay’s own journey, an Indonesian Australian making a home for himself in England and finding strange parallels between his life and the lives of the animals he examines. Mixing natural history with memoir, this book explores the mystery of our animal neighbours, in all their richness and variety. It is about the wonder these animals inspired in our ancestors, the hope they inspire in us, and the joy they might still hold for our children. Michael Malay tells the story of the economic, political and cultural events that have shaped the modern landscape of Britain.

From the questions that followed the discussion, Michael described how he hoped the book would act as a companion to walk alongside a young person from West Sussex who would want to learn about nature, migration and connections. He described how he insisted with the publishers that there be an image of two people walking up Troopers Hill in Bristol that features on the front cover to emphasise the importance of relationships. To help celebrate a splendid evening Michael picked out the winning ticket from our prize draw presented a free signed copy of the book to one lucky customer. He concluded the evening by engaging in discussion with those who had joined us for the evening and by signing copies of the book-we have limited quantities of signed copies available in the bookshop. We thank all our customers who joined us and to both Michael and Alison for providing such an interesting and engaging discussion.