Art Craft and Leisure news

My Body Is A Meadow is an ode to our natural world and a sharp and urgent call for an open and accessible landscape. By binding poetry to prose and memoir to manifesto, Bethany Handley writes a deeply perceptive account of her journey accessing the south Wales countryside since becoming a wheelchair user.

Handley, an award-winning writer, poet and disability activist, is also a naturalist; she embodies her environment so much that she becomes it. Each passage is a gift that reveals something sobering: the systems in which we live have long been gatekeepers. Architectural barriers (such as gates, stiles and steep terrain), everyday ableism and the perpetual ecocide are all disabling tools to us and our planet. Accessing nature should not be this difficult: we are nature ourselves and belong in our landscapes.

While doctors, policymakers, and non-disabled people pressure Handley into overcoming her conditions, she embarks on a journey of radical acceptance. Wheeling through the Welsh countryside among mountains and rivers, she makes space for all of her feelings as she learns that “grief and joy can co-exist”. Compelling and change-making, this book is an essential read for those who love the outdoors.

With a new book out this month and a packed intercontinental schedule to promote it, including a couple of Welsh stops, bestselling author Matt Haig keeps a cool head and gives Julia Bottoms some of his time.

Against the backdrop of his son’s spotless, whitewashed bedroom in his Brighton home, Matt Haig just might be the picture image of the modern writer. He speaks as he writes – frankly, with little filter – about personal anxieties and work-related pressures, Instagram and writing bestselling novels from the living room sofa.

He also speaks of his new novel, The Midnight Train. Structurally, the novel mirrors the narrative architecture of A Christmas Carol, centering 81-year old Wilbur Budd who, on the brink of his death, discovers a train that can take him back in time to relive his most important moments.

If Haig were to relive the most important moments of his life, which might he choose? Career-wise, there is no shortage. He might return to 2010, when he was dropped by his publisher for writing The Radleys, a fantasy novel about a family of vampires, only to find another publisher and achieve his breakthrough. Or perhaps 2015, the year he published bestseller-to-be Reasons To Stay Alive, his candid account of a depressive episode that brought him to the brink of suicide.

Or to 2020, when he wrote The Midnight Library, about a woman who explores alternate versions of her life through a mysterious library. The book sold nearly 14 million copies, but inspired as much expectation as success. “Some people out there loved it, some people thought I was the worst writer to have ever lived,” Haig recalls. Struggling to know what to write next, he fell into a creative slump and took a year off. “I had an existential crisis and was in therapy for a while” – which helped, as did deleting social media. 

The Midnight Train exists in the same cinematic universe, but – as Haig emphasises – “It’s not really a sequel. It comes to a completely different conclusion to The Midnight Library – it’s having an argument with it, in terms of what it’s saying about life.” It also fulfils his long-standing desire to write a love story – and a time travel story. 

These days, Haig has returned to social media, but confines himself to Instagram, where he posts daily content from life updates to long reflections on mental health, Trump, AI and plenty more. Yet he feels “on the brink of pulling the plug”. Over the past decade, Haig has been subjected to sustained trolling, accused of mansplaining feminism, monetising mental health, even becoming embroiled in a plagiarism conspiracy.

“If I regret anything, it’s that for 10 years I was arguing with people and making enemies on X.” Sticking to Instagram seems to have helped. “I don’t have nervous breakdowns like I did when I was arguing with everyone online.”

Haig seems bracketed in the public consciousness as a frank, unembellished storyteller and steady literary guide amid life’s turbulence. Yet in person, he is somewhat self-contradictory: confident yet self-conscious, he interjects yet apologises for straying even a centimetre from my questions. “Writers, I think, are naturally quite private, introverted and shy people, but you’re expected to have this other life,” he says. “That public persona thing – I’m not good at it. I feel like I fundamentally disappoint people.” 

Still, the author appears more at ease in the context of in-person events, almost 30 of which are booked for the coming weeks – two Welsh dates featured amidst visits to Germany and the USA. At Hay, he’s also set to join Adrian Chiles, Dawn French and Hugh Bonneville on Radio 4’s Saturday Live programme. It’s 20 years since his first Hay appearance – when, he recalls, “there were zero people there to see me on the panel.” This year, he can expect a few more. 

Matt Haig, Savoy Theatre, Monmouth, Fri 15 May (tickets: £12; info: here); Hay Festival, Fri 22 May (tickets: £16. Info: here)

The Midnight Train is published by Canongate on Thurs 21 May. Info: here

words JULIA BOTTOMS