 Hello and welcome to this British Library event presented in partnership with Penguin Live. I'm Brett Walsh of the Cultural Events Department and as you can see I'm not in the library, I'm in my sunny garden in South London, but the library is now open to readers and we'll be opening our exhibition spaces in the next few weeks. So if you do want to come and see us please check out our website to book your place. Now tonight is the first in a double bill of events exploring nature and the environment. There's still time to book your place for the second event which will be Anita Seti and that will be starting at 8 o'clock. Anita will be in conversation about her new book, I Belong Here. So there's more info on this and a link to book your tickets just below the video. But for now it's my pleasure to welcome you to this conversation between Dara McUnulty and Lucy Siegel. Dara is going to be talking about his award winning Diary of a Young Naturalist which is out in paperback today. Before I hand over to Lucy I've just got a few points of housekeeping for you. We will be taking public questions so if you'd like to put a question to Dara please submit it using the form below the video. Also if you'd like to order a copy of the book you can do so using the menu just above the video here. You'll also find a feedback button and a donate button in that same menu. Your feedback is really important to us and the British Library is a charity so we really appreciate any donations you can make. So our chair tonight is Lucy Siegel. Lucy is a climate environmental journalist and broadcaster. She is written for The Observer and she's known as the green reporter on the BBC's one show. She was an executive producer on the Netflix documentary The True Cost which is about sustainability and the fashion industry. And she's also the co-host of the podcast series So Hot Right Now which has featured some fantastic guests including Sir David Attenborough. I really hope you enjoyed this conversation tonight so without further ado I hand over to Lucy and Dara. Thank you. Good evening and thank you so much for virtually attending this very special event and for the British Library for staging it. It's such a thrill for me to be able to interview Dara McNulty tonight. I enjoyed his book Diary of a Young Naturalist. There's the hardback version but the paperback version is out today. So this is a bit of a celebration as well. I found the book so resonant and I kind of wished that it had been around when I was much younger because it really for me made sense of that kind of passion for nature but of all the things that you're putting together and being very specific to one landscape. And in a way it is the story of Dara's love of the landscape that he grew up in and has observed so closely and I'm sure we can agree his powers of observation are quite astounding as is his ability to write. So it's a great thrill to meet him tonight albeit virtually. I hope one day that I can go and see the landscape that he writes about myself. Anyway Dara is a naturalist, a writer and crucially for me as well an environmental campaigner. He's the youngest ever winner of the RSPB medal and he won the Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing in 2020 with the book Diary of a Young Naturalist. He's worked with Chris Packham, the RSPB National Trust and the Wildlife Trust. He's an ambassador for the RSPCA and the Jane Goodall Institute as well as making films and radio programs for the BBC. He lives in Northern Ireland, he was in Ramana and now I think he is the star of the county down. We'll hear more about that I'm sure and we also need to remember that he is still I think in full-time education so he's managing a lot of stuff. Good evening Dara and thank you for making the time to talk to us this evening. It's a great thrill. Thank you so much. Hearing those compliments sometimes makes me want to curl up inside. Writing has been that passion of mine and something that's driven me forward for a long, long time and especially in this beautiful, beautiful place of county down. It is just magical and I'm sure we'll talk about this throughout this chat but it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. It differs from Ramana, it's different but it's new and exciting for me and I'll be excited to share it with you in my book which I'm so happy is now in paperback form and to be able to put it out into the world to a much wider audience because it's what I've I was wanted to do always was to try and share my voice because it was the way that I felt I can make a difference in the world was through writing. And so to come this far now just it makes me so, so happy inside. Yeah, and it really has been we were talking a little bit just before this event started that the hardback copy came out in May 2020, which will live long in the memory for a variety of reasons, most of which are not good. But the one thing that people kept saying, you know, across across these islands people kept saying that they had woken up to nature in a way that they haven't before. So your book has been extremely beneficial during that period for a lot of people I know because they told me personally. That must feel good. It does and releasing that book and lockdown. In some ways, it was really really difficult because I couldn't go out to bookshops and see do book signings and all of that and see it evolve physically. But what ended up happening was it almost became something for people to read while they were in lockdown because not a lot of books were being published. It was, it was quite difficult for to publish books during lockdown. That almost made my book in a way stand out with the nature that everybody was now looking at because that most their lives have receded away. It was nobody was working and there was no you couldn't go out anywhere. So you went to nature and we spent most of our lives for those months out in nature and to almost my book coming out at that time was almost showing people how I usually see the world. They were just going into that experiencing nature as a full time viewpoint. They were almost being baked into it for the first time. And my book was sort of about living that life all the time. Because in a way, if you're not used to it, you need or you become removed from it because in the daily, you know, hustle and bustle of life and lots of people commuting long distances working, you know, really long hours. You almost need permission to connect with nature. It can feel quite like a sort of slightly odd even slightly forbidden in a way. And I think because you are so absorbed and you write about it in such an immediate way it kind of gave a lot of people permission just to let it happen around you don't need to have any particular response at first. You might just decide just to sit and watch and be restful and still. So, but the place I kind of wanted to start was, when did you realize that you could write about nature. Like when did you realize that you had this ability to catalog what was happening in the natural world around you. I don't think that there was a real point of realization because for me it was just a part of my way of life was writing because I needed to be able to write because I couldn't express my way in any other form. Talking was almost impossible for me before I started writing. All of the other art forms I was horrific at. So, I just went for writing and so that became that way that I could almost express myself and put my words, instead of crashing about my head which where they can do a lot of damage. A surprising amount of damage that if we don't actually get the ideas are in our head out somewhere or anywhere. They just sort of rattle about in there and so writing was that way for me. And so it just became a part of my daily life and because I was out in nature so much. Nature became the subject of my writings more than anything else because I like to write about what was familiar to me and nature was the most familiar. And just on a sort of practical level, do you take a little notebook with you? Do you record stuff? Do you write like, you know, when you're trying to write in the rain with a biro? I mean, how do you or do you just remember things and do you write every day? Do you kind of download what you've seen? What's your kind of process like I suppose? So I've got a few different ways that I'll do it. Sometimes I'll take notebooks out into the field of me and do it that way and record my observations as they happen. But more likely because I'm really, really forgetful. I relate to that. I'll write everything. I don't, I forget things, but I cannot forget memories. So I will then download all the information at the end of the day onto the page. Where I almost re, I process it again. I can't understand what happened without doing this almost double process of the information or else it's sort of a bit tangled for me. So I then write everything down. And when I say write everything down, I mean I'm doing random scribbles on random notebooks that are scattered throughout the house. And at the end of a period of time, I'll collect up all these notebooks with the scribblings on them, collect them up, make them a little bit more coherent, work them into something that is actually can read well on the page. Then I condense it and condense it down so I can get a few pages down to like a few paragraphs. Because one of my favorite things to do when writing is the technique of deletion, which is where you remove everything until you've only got the bare bones and the essence of what you want to write about. And that elegance now I think is almost what I aspire to do in any writing that I undertake is to be able to express the same thing in as few words as possible, because then it just becomes more concentrated and raw and gets to the point, instead of a lot of superfluous language on top of it. So, yeah, that's sort of my writing process. And so it is quite, it just sort of spills out in the stream of consciousness then it's sculpted. Yeah, and I think that comes across because you know, some some people would would associate nature writing with, you know, an awful lot of description, quite kind of language. Yours is very punchy, and you get you get a lot I mean it's very layered sometimes you get like, you know, three different historical epochs in a description, you know, and it's so it's it's it's very very tight so it doesn't surprise me that that's your kind of process. And, well, I think you know be really nice to hear some of your work. So, Dara, I don't know if you'd mind reading for us, but I think we'd enjoy that at this point. And remember, please audience please do send through your questions whenever you whenever you want. That would be great. So this is what the paperback looks like. So, because I think we've only seen the hardback. I absolutely love this the paperback. And this is going to be the prologue to spring. In the darkness, my dreams are interrupted. I'm somewhere between swimming to the surface and coming up for air, and the flute catches my consciousness. The bedroom walls disappear. The space between my bed and the garden narrows becomes one. I rise without moving pinned by the heaviness of sleep. The notes keep falling on my chest. Now I can see the blackbird in my mind is testosterone arrows flying as the territorial sonatas spread across the dawn engrossed in the symphony awake and thinking the worrying of my brain begins spring varies from space to space. But for me, it's in the sights and the sounds swirling around my every day from sky to roots that hold the most magic. Spring is the frog that crossed our path at the beginning of our time in this house. Our first encounter was a splodge of spawn left quickly on the road. It's invisible pathway intruded upon by modernity. Obsessed, we dug out a watery sanctuary with hope, a small bucket of water buried and filled with broken clay pots, pebbles, plants and some sticks for the entrance and exit. We didn't really know if it would work. Anything deeper would have needed a digger to break through the boulder clay that we're best blessed with in our suburban in the skill and garden. But there was another meeting the following year when our amphibian friend danced a jig on the grass and was joined by another, leaving us a gift of frog spawn in the bucket refuge. We were exultant, our whoops of excitement could be heard from the bottom of the hill drowning out for a moment, the sound of cars traveling to Sligo or Dublin, and even rallying against the background noise of the concrete factory nearby. So that was from the beginning of spring and at that point I was still in from Anna. It's always kind of funny when I think about that the the year that I decided to write a diary that was going to document my life and possibly get published because was the year that everything sort of happened in my life. I got, I guess that's a silver lining to some of the stuff that happened that made a good book. But yeah, so it, it was a book that I didn't know what was going to happen and I didn't know what the ending of the book was when I was writing that excerpt, it was unknown. Usually when the author writes a book, they got their plan they've got their storyboards and their beginning middle and end and how the story is going to develop and how characters are going to develop as well. But for me it just had to happen naturally because it was diary. Which I guess is slightly terrifying for an author because you don't know if you're going to have a happier set ending at the end of the book. I don't know if we should give it away for people who haven't read it. I'm not giving it away. Yeah, we need to be careful. But you talk, you know, the way that you talk about your home at the time, and the way that you talk about, you know, this amazing prize of the frog spawn and the experimentation. There's so many different emotions, there's lots of conflicting emotions happening at the same time. There's the uncertainty, as you say, what lies ahead. There's also a thread of disappointment, which I'd like to talk about because you know this is the basis for well for all activism arguably around the environment is that the roads are encroaching. It feels like time is being taken away from us. It feels like every species that we express an interest in is under pressure and under threat, and then there's the other existential threat of of the climate crisis. And of course it's not just a climate crisis. It's a dual crisis of climate and nature. So I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how you process these concerns, fears, however they sit for you, and how that leads to your activism to your campaigning. I sort of, I try to process things and sometimes it can be devastating in the harm that we've inflicted on our world just overwhelms you. And my therapy for dealing with that is going out into nature and writing because it shows me how beautiful the world is and continues to be and going seeing that. Number one, it gives me hope that if such beauty can exist in the world, surely there is there is a good there is the way for us to save it. And it also gives me the determination to keep on going because something that beautiful deserves to be protected. And so going out into nature is my usual way of processing that sort of information. And my activism now comes through writing and because I believe that it's so so important for art in activism because how can it's the way that humans transfer information is through art writing paintings, how we show how beautiful the world is, how we motivate ourselves into doing things to care about our world comes from art and activism through words. And so, almost writing the book in the writing the diary was that almost inner struggle between me, between myself of whether or not writing can be worth it from the sense of activism from the sense of worth from the sense of actually what it means to to write and to express art and how is that actually essential and it is is the general conclusion that I made. Good. I'm relieved. I'm relieved that's the conclusion that we've come to. I mean, I suppose the act of writing in itself is an is an is an act of hope, because you know, we wouldn't be doing it if we didn't feel that it was, you know, going to change something or that people were going to read it I mean you hope that people read it don't you I mean that's that's the thing. So I suppose what was what were your hopes for the book as as as you were writing it through that process, because I mean let's not sugarcoat it. It's a lot of work. And presumably you weren't short of work anyway I mean you're doing your a levels on you I mean you know, and it was a long time ago but I remember that being a significant amount of work. So when I was writing the book, I was doing my GCSEs at the time. Yeah, and so there was a lot of work and I found but I did find that there's a once you start tapping into it there's a lot of time in the day that I just didn't really think about beforehand. And because it was writing a diary was a part of my daily routine. It didn't impact me that much the time usage because it was just that daily routine that I just did every day. It. The book for the hopes I have for the book were very little because when I was writing the first bit of the book I didn't even know that was going to get published. I didn't why I didn't I why I knew that it might get published but it was only meant to be like a little, a little thing and to give up the Twitter followers but then I just kept on writing. So the book sort of didn't come out almost for an audience in a sense it came out because I just I just got really obsessed and addicted to writing and in this form. And I had enjoyed it so much that I just kept on right like I got to the end of spring writing spring. I was like, Oh, I'm writing a book. Oh, it's happening. And I know that you I know you're really excited about the paperback coming out and I know that's because it will get to more people. And it's, you know, really, really accessible. It's a really accessible form of understanding about nature and landscape and activism and where we are now. What do you want readers to take from it? What would you like? What would you like them to do? I would like people after I can't really say what people get and sense people will get after reading my book. But I do hope that people look on the natural world in new eyes and can go out into the natural world and begin possibly to see all the details that exist within it. And all those beautiful little things because it's all those beautiful little things that build up and up and up until you have the massive picture that is so complex. And so intricate yet it is built up on such delicate little details. And if and you can transfer that almost that view of all the little details making up our world to all areas of life. But you can even activism where all the little details will eventually come up to affecting the bigger picture. And if people can take that away that is important for us to take time when we're going outside, even if it's just five minutes, just to notice what's going on around them, just for a little bit. And that would be what I hope people take away from the book. But I guess people can sort of make up their own minds when they're reading. I want to talk to you we've got some questions coming in so we'll start taking audience questions in a minute and keep them coming by the way. I wanted to talk to you about how we view nature writing but also filmmaking and audio or all sorts of ways of capturing nature, because there has been especially in filmmaking and I talk about this a lot with filmmakers who are also climate activists. And the amount of projects that involve going to the Arctic or going to the Galapagos and making really kind of epic shows about far flung destinations. It's incredible. Sometimes you wonder if people have come into the industry for the travel. And I wondered what you thought of that because you observe literally what is on your doorstep, and that's become your thing. But behind that, do you have this kind of wanderlust and, you know, when the pandemic's hopefully over one day and you've done your exams. Are you are you going to leap on a plane and file reports from across the world. The local nature for me is always being massive because it's the place that's closest to us it's our little lifeline that we can go to to survive the everyday and for that it will always be the most important thing in my life that local nature, because you can only go to like the Galapagos once. And yet you can go to your forest that's nearby or a park or someplace. That's close every day. And that's almost constant place that you can escape to, I think is one of the most incredible things that I think a lot of people don't realize is that nature exists. Everywhere and if we just take the little bit of time to explore that local nature we discover a whole incredible world. And so I do love low, but I do have a little bit of wanderlust in me. I think that I think most people do know. Where do you want to go. I can go up somewhere high. The high places. Where do I want to go. This is the thing I never really think. Sometimes I'm so buried in my local nature that I never really think about where I'd actually like to go. I feel like if I love just going any place, if that sort of makes sense, there's no specific place, because then you're almost setting yourself up to fail in my opinion. Going there to see something or to visit a particular place than that almost defeats the purpose for me because all the fun that is going to a place that you don't really know what is exactly there. And then going on that journey of discovery and exploration. And this I'm connecting to the landscape in your own way over a bit of time is what really matters for me. It's I don't really like, I'm like, you know, twitchers and stuff, taking off birds or anything. I don't really like that. I more go in for the experience of that journey of discovery. So there's no real particular place, but if I'm like, if I was just going to a different country, which is completely different ecosystem, and that would be just fascinating for me because it's got all those details that I love so much but in a completely different context of a different climate, a different landscape, and different adaptations that have come from that, leading to all of these different branches of the web that makes up our natural world. I mean, all that would be the big thing for me. And that will then that can come from basically any place, be it hundreds of thousands of miles away, or just, or just a few hundreds. And how do we square the carbon emissions from traveling to places like that is that something that you that you think about are you conscious about your own footprint. Yeah, your work has been tremendously low carbon. So far, because you've really been observing what's around you, which is, you know, amazing. Um, but yeah, just with that with that concern you. It probably was concerned me. I like I'd have to wait until like electric like for electric flight or something. Before I could really feel confident about doing that, doing large travels, but because I love that my nature so much that doesn't much to me. Whether or not I get to travel or not, that could be nice to do, but for me it's not really too important. Um, but I do think about it a lot if I'm ever just taking a plane to like before the lockdown times to do a talk or something in like England because I live in Ireland. It's like if you ever wanted to do a talk in England or Scotland or somewhere that have to take a plane. So I guess there was there was doubt and it does weigh heavily on you because you're is the price of getting the message out worth the damn possible damage. It's almost like I've got like make a calculation in my head of if I can offset my carbon costs through activism and words. Um, by how much that will then reduce to see you to them thinking about it that way. Because I feel like if you're there, if you're using that to do a message or it's not meaningless damage, it's almost to make sure that future generations can see a world which is beautiful. And yeah, it definitely is something that does plague me a little bit. I mean, I suppose Greta took an eco yacht, didn't she across to to the UN summit in New York. I mean, I can't remember how many days she was at sea, but it was that was pretty epic and courageous in and of itself. Do you feel I mean, how do you feel towards older generations like myself. Do you feel we should have done more to cut emissions. Do you feel that we have dumped things on the shoulders of your of your generation by not by not grasping the net all and getting on with cutting emissions. I mean, we've known about it for, you know, 30 plus years. I guess like there's two answers to that. There's the short answer which is yes, the older generations have caused immeasurable damage to the natural world but then there's also the more nuanced answer where there has been devastating greed that has been inundated on our world. And can I really blame an entire generation for the actions of a few people on that have caused this widespread devastation. And those are the people who are really to blame for all this because I've met so many people of the older generations who love the world so so much. And it's almost those people who have put forward this greed and destruction have not only almost tainted in our minds what we think of the people who are passing on our world as being almost giving us a broken world. And that's almost causing that's that generational tension. But they've also managed to not give young people a future that I think every generation deserves. So those people who have engaged with that greed are the ones that we should really be blaming because as easy as it is to just blame a generation. It's almost when you when it comes down to it and they the fossil fuel industry plastics industry those giants who during the 90s were almost obscuring climate science. And it's it's sad that it came down to this where we're at a point where the older generation and the younger generation are coming to blows on the actions of a few. And whilst we're in this territory we have a question from Angela and Angela says what is your advice for young people experiencing eco anxiety and maybe not so young people as well who experience. So my general advice for eco anxiety is to go out into nature because the thing that cures it for me is seeing how beautiful the world is. And that sort of lets me escape from the human world for a little bit because it's very easy when you're in your room and you're seeing all of these horrific articles of devastation that's going on across the world and to feel utterly hopeless. But just going out into nature and can help you realize that the world is beautiful and from seeing a beautiful world you can go forth with hope and hope is what drives us to action and motivates us to take action because without hope. What would we ever do why like why would we bother if we did not believe that we could succeed and so hope is essential and nature and going out into nature is almost the bringer of that hope. So I would just say just get out into nature and even if it is just for 10 minutes a day. It will come it will benefit your life so so much. And Eila asks as a young person who loves nature and she really loved reading your book last year her question is what is your advice for young people she lives in London and so an urban young person, both in discovering nature, but also beginning to write about it like what's your advice for like, I know picking up a pen writing the first things about nature. My first my general advice is, it's what I do to still to the stay is, and I feel like the thing that most people don't realize is when the writer or an offer write something. Usually when they first write something, it's not really that good. I write, if anybody had read the original like notes and stuff, they were going, what on earth is this. It's rubbish. So, but getting that first stream of consciousness out there, getting something else onto the page is almost the best way of starting to write because you need that almost that see that you've written something to be able to write more and then you can refine that and into something beautiful. But that's almost secondary to the fact that you're getting something out on the page. And then I guess practice just observing and writing and getting it into a more polishing off the edges. Every time you start a writing session, you're going to be writing, not very some stuff that you're not going to think is really, really good because I write so much stuff, like the volume that I write and most of it is really good and I just sort of take out what's good out of that. And I think almost the skill of rising for me is less about trying to write out the perfect paragraph first time round. It's more just having an eye that so that when I do write something good in this stream of consciousness I can pull it out and then arrange it in something that's coherent. That's my general advice just just let it all out. It doesn't need to be good. Doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to exist. Such good advice. I remember once interviewing Fay Weldon, the novelist, and she also taught a creative writing course, and she said the amount of people that have come to her and said, I've got a book in me and she'd say well it's not very good in you is it I can write it down and then we can start. But it is an act of courage as well to write something down because it can be quite scary. Do you know when you've got it. Do you know when something's good, or do you rely on working with an editor or your family or do you or do you know when you've got it. Sometimes I do sometimes I don't there's sometimes when I'm writing that I get I get excited by a line that I've just written. Yeah. Now that every time I know this feeling now, and anybody who does writing will know you. I said like you go, you're proud of yourself for coming off this little line. And you know nobody else will when they're reading the book will ever know the joy that you that's the line, unless you're a writer because then you can sort of recognize the line where they did that little thing and it's a lot of fun now, going through the books that I've read and going, they were really excited when they wrote that. And so sometimes I know it like that but other times I've just got to get my family to read it, someone else to read it. And with the diary it was in a diary format so not a lot was changed. I'm almost at the beginning of the book my I would generally consider my writing and technically to be pretty bad at the beginning of the book. And that's a part of the my development throughout the diary is my writing actually gets better because the medium is really, really important for a diary because it's a diary it's you talking to the invisible. You're invisible companion that you're writing to in the diary. So the medium is incredibly important because the author is the character. And so the writing has almost had to you had to see that in the writing, which kind of came out naturally because I had never written anything like this before my entire life of actually going and writing a diary in this sort of format. So I got better at it as I got along, went along. So the writing is I would consider winter to be the best chapter because that was the one that I had the most practice with writing. And you're being a little bit hard on yourself in the early chapters because I think it's all it's all got an energy and a spirit to it that is is just so, just so rocketed and really carries you along but I would agree you know by the end of the book it's it's it's just incredibly powerful, really, really powerful. But I mean the format is really interesting because you are following in a deep tradition of cataloging nature in a diary format. You know it's something that will Victorian and Edwardian writers used to use so there are a lot of examples around and then maybe kind of really fallen out of fashion as you kind of rediscovered it. Were you had you read any other sort of nature diaries or work from I don't know even some of those Victorian conservationists and collectors. So there were a few books that definitely I've been reading them, like the Almanac the same country and Almanac was a book that I loved when I first read it. And that was actually one of the things that made me want to write a diary and there was also the Peregrine, which is amazing book. I would. And also, it was just something that I've been, been doing I just been writing a diary and I think my diary is different to those old Victorian and Edwardian diaries and that they were, but it's almost, it's taking their almost their way of looking at the pages with, because they were would record all of the little details that they were seeing every day, so they could almost scientifically observe them at a later date. And I was sort of doing that I was recording everything that I could see in the minute minute details that I was witnessing on my everyday life, and trying to put them down to the page. So it does have that parallels and that I guess the difference for this is is that their entries would be around about almost the same length. My ones very wildly in how long they are some of them are are like a paragraph long others are free pages. And their day. I've also got a lot more block prose, which is, I think is a new thing for diaries. The whole is having not just speaking to the, when you're writing to a diary or speaking to like the omnipotent diary person. Yeah, that person that viewer that audience member. Yeah, the dear diary. And sometimes sometimes they can be very self conscious. Can't they? Because of that but yours, you will sometimes go into these completely transporting passages. And as I sort of said before, sometimes they're going back to kind of ancient times, and they're very layered. And I wonder if you briefly just talk about the attraction of myth and legend because that was something kind of very special that came that came across for me that you connect certain places and certain species of wildlife to myth and legend. Yeah, so I love mythology. It was the first bit of, I guess, something that wasn't a straight fact book that I was reading were methodological books, because I didn't read novels until I was like 10 I just was engrossed in knowledge and facts. And so mythology was that step into storytelling as a, and how we humans have interpreted the world that we live in throughout our past and how that has impacted us to this day. And I'm Irish to the Celts were really, and the Norths were really, really important to me. And also the Greeks. I love Greek mythology as well. And so that was really, really important to me because stories are the original source of stories comes from nature. And the importance that it has for those stories is massive. And for the Celts, especially they looked to the landscape and to the stars for their stories and a funny thing that I think I realized when I'm doing my research for the wanderings of a young naturalist, which is going to be a book on mythology and Irish mythology and the how it links to the places, which will be published at some point I've absolutely no idea. So I was doing my research for it. And I'm the, it drew some attention to something that in the sky night sky there's the little group of cluster of stars called the Pleiades or the seven sisters. And they go by multiple names and they were worshiped by all sorts of peoples across the world it was this little clump of stars seem to be the center of attention of so many mythologies. And I didn't realize that if we were to pick a number between one and 10. The two numbers that were most likely to pick our seven and three. And if you pick a number between one and 10 it's bizarre that stories have had such a profound impact on our development that when we're we have almost a bias for this these two numbers and the free is very, very important in many different mythologies and the free sisters and in Celtic mythology we have the crown the maiden and the mother in Greek you have free sisters in North the free norms and it it was a fascinating thing for me I'm going to complete tangent here. This upon yourself. But how stories actually affect us so deeply that whenever I say picking up random number between one and 10 our brains are so deeply rooted in nature and story that it almost alters our perception. Well, there you go I mean we're carrying these stories and we don't even know it you know dynamos worked it out and we didn't even know it all these magicians know our biases. And you've also actually answered or started to answer a question within that which is good as well. Let me take some more questions because Helen Helen or Helen wanted to know are you working on another book at the moment. You've mentioned that there's one coming or in the pipeline on mythology. There's also another one that we're not allowed to talk about the. There, I'm allowed to talk about it is called Wild Child. I think that's also the name of this talk. Yes it is. Well done. And it is a picture book it's going to be illustrated by the same person who did the cover of diary of a young naturalist Barry falls which I'm really really excited about. I did have it here but it's disappeared. And I can't but I can show you the inside of it because that's secret. But the cover did look did look lovely. Ifa says something I mean one of the one of the things that also the big departure between we talked about diaries from naturalists that have come before. And one of the things that comes across in yours is just the warmth and the family connection and we know you know we learn a lot about your family and we meet your family. Ifa Mulligan says she loved the close family bond you described so beautifully in your book, especially how your parents nurtured you and your siblings love of nature. Yeah, I thought I was absolutely beautiful. What advice would you give to parents to encourage their children to connect with the natural world as opposed to phones, TV, etc. I'm suggesting ifa is a parent and would like some advice. The first biggest advice that I say and the thing I'm so grateful for my parents for doing is allowing us to run wild a little bit not whenever we're climbing a tree. I'm saying oh no no no don't do that that's dangerous or whenever I was mucking about in the garden. Oh no no no that's dirty because whenever you do that it locks off an areas of child's brain. It stops it and parents have such a power over their children that we learn from our parents that thing is dangerous we don't do that. And if we do that for nature then that cuts it out of our entire lives at a very early age and at that point it's really hard to almost reverse at that stage because it's ingrains in us from through parenting. So my general advice would be just let your kids run wild a bit and they'll be out in nature a lot more. I think with phones and video games and all of that there's definitely a balance that can be made. I do have a guilty love of quite a few video games. Which ones? I do like some open world games. I love civilization. That's probably one of my favorite games. And lots of different strategy games. Games like Star Wars if anybody knows them they don't know what I mean. And that's sort of just something that I enjoy doing so that's fine. Just letting them go out on walks, letting them run wild a bit because that was the most thing that I was most grateful for my parents for doing. It was allowing me to do that. But there's not much more advice I can. I think that's really, I think that's good advice. I mean I think white trainers should be banned because people, I've seen people taking diversions so they don't get their trainers muddy or scuffed. And that drives you mad. So, you know, you've got to have footwear that you're not anxious about, please. So let's take a couple of closing questions. Oh, there's some really nice ones. And people just love the book so much, Dara. I want you to know this. I hope you do know this. And Polly, so this brings us back really to the start. Polly wants to know what signifies the coming of spring for you. Blackbirds. That was the thing that signified it in the book. It's blackbirds. It's always been blackbirds. Their song has always represented spring for me because I don't really consider spring to have started until I hear the blackbirds fully singing. So that spring for me is blackbirds. It's just because it was that thing that was deeply ingrained into me as a child, because I watched the blackbird through shadow on curtains. And I was obsessed with this blackbird. And then one year, one, at some point, stopped singing because it wasn't spring anymore. I didn't know that birds didn't sing in after spring. So I was like, oh my goodness me, what happens to the blackbird that I loved. And I was like, but then I was basically like, I don't want to not know anything anymore. So I went on the fact reading spree. And if you know the eye witness books that you see in libraries, I have read every single one. And that's why I spent my, my, my children years doing was just reading all of those. Didn't read a fiction book until I was like 10. And that. So. And can you remember? Can you remember a lot of the facts that you read? Sometimes I do store them. They are definitely in there. And I've got, if something triggers that little fact in there, I'll go, Oh, I know that. So the information is still in there somewhere. Sometimes it's a bit hidden, but it's definitely still in there. So now I've just, it was an interesting thing, but now I've just got all these random facts so I can just pull out my. I could I book you for the WWF annual quiz, usually around Christmas time, please. I'd just like to put a marker down there. Very competitive and I think this would be your just what we need. Okay, Dara has been such an amazing privilege to talk to you. And especially on the day that the paperback is issued. I'm not allowed to. I'm going to have to take a final question and there is a huge question from Emma, which I've been so one more actually just before we go to Emma's question. Do you still keep a diary? I do still keep a diary. The diary is still there. Funnily enough when we're moving house again and just like a few miles up the road. I found the original diary. As in the original diary of a young naturalist like the first notebooks where the diary entries are on, which is fun. It was like, it was hidden in like a box somewhere. But I found it and the first ever notebook, which is how is it. Yeah. Sorry. How is it? Is it? Is it? Was it weird to see it? Yeah, it was weird to see it. And yeah, so that was quite fun. But yeah, the diary is still very much going going on. It will never be published, but so. Well, maybe maybe one day it will be in the British Library. That's next to the word to Wordsworth's originals. Sounds like a sweet words with original documents. So if you want to hear Emma's question, this is the question that we're going to finish on, Dara. If you could send a message to everyone on earth, everyone, what would you say? I would say just get out into nature. Take those five minutes a day. Just to my notice, just to notice the world around you. By noticing, we build up this picture of our world that inspires connection and love and compassion. And from that love and compassion and connection, we build up a determination to want to protect that. And by everybody wanting to protect that together, we can make real change in the world. That's how it works. Brilliant answer to a great question. Dara McAnulty, thank you so much for joining us tonight. And everybody make sure that you get your order in for the paperback of Diary of a Young Naturalist. This is the hard cover that the paperback is out today. Oh, it looks great, doesn't it? Doesn't it look great? Dara, thank you so much. We're going to hand back over to Brett. And I hope we get to meet again in person. That would be great. Thank you so much. It has been amazing to get to talk, especially on the publication day of my paperback. Thank you. Thank you. A huge thank you to Dara and Lucy for that inspiring conversation and hope that you all enjoyed it at home as well. If you'd like to buy a copy of Dara's book, you can do so just using the link above the video. And you can also give us your feedback about the event. If you enjoyed this event and others in our nature season, please do stick around as we've got another one starting tonight at 8 o'clock. That will be with the writer Anita Seti. And you can find more details on this just below the video. Thank you and good night from the British Library.