Edinburgh's Radical Bookshop
Basket
Event

Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure with Samantha Walton

image for event: Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure with Samantha Walton

Featured Speakers

Samantha Walton & Jessica Gaitán Johannesson


We could not be more thrilled to welcome Dr. Samantha Walton to the bookshop garden* for a verdant launch of Everybody Needs Beauty, a vital, timely investigation of the nature cure.

'This book represents, genuinely, a moment of ground-breaking importance for how we think about nature, access and wellbeing in late capitalism' Dr Alice Tarbuck

Everybody is talking about the healing properties of nature. Hospitals are being retrofitted with gardens, and forests reimagined as wellbeing centres. On the Shetland Islands, it is possible to walk into a doctor's surgery with anxiety or depression, and walk out with a prescription for nature.

Where has this come from, and what does 'going to nature' mean? Where is it – at the end of a garden, beyond the tarmac fringes of a city, at the summit of a mountain?

Drawing on history, science, literature and art, Samantha Walton shows that the nature cure has deep roots – but, as we face an unprecedented crisis of mental health, social injustice and environmental devastation, the search for it is more urgent now than ever.

Everybody Needs Beauty engages seriously with the connection between nature and health, while scrutinising the harmful trends of a wellness industry that seeks to exploit our relationship with the natural world. In doing so, this book explores how the nature cure might lead us towards a more just and radical way of life: a real means of recovery, for people, society and nature.

*Yes, we will be in the garden! We have giant parasols to protect from rain and a number of blankets as well as a few heaters, but do dress very warmly, and bring extra blankets if you can.

Featured Books