It’s one of these, the red-haired Guiwenneth, who becomes an obsession for the Huxley men, driving each of them in turn to attempt to reach the heart of the woods. George and a friend from Oxford discovered that a mysterious interaction between the energies of mind and tree causes forest legends of old – Robin Hood, King Arthur, Celtic tribes – to spring into life as mythagos. In a letter and diary entries we find out the substance of this fixation. Both have been fixated on the neighbouring ancient woodland, which possesses magical properties. His father George is dead, and his brother Christian is increasingly distant. But all is not well at his family home on an estate in Herefordshire. The story centres on Steven Huxley, a 20-year-old recently returned to England from the horrors of World War II. The woods in Robert Holdstock’s World Fantasy Award-winning novel Mythago Wood are much more masculine, violent places. Such wonder has no doubt inspired everything from “forest bathing” (derived from the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku) to the rich tradition of myths and legends of forest folk, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to FernGully. There is the wonder of trees and their way of living, and the reminder that Earth does not belong to us (by weight, plants overwhelmingly dominate the planet). Whenever I walk in one, whether it is the rainforests of Tasmania or the dry eucalypt forests near Melbourne, I feel a deep sense of peace and perspective to be surrounded by beings that live on such different timescales.

There is something magical about forests.

Darak the Minotaur by J.A. Flynn