A Wagon in the Woods with Wainwright Prize winner and Emmy award winning filmmaker James Aldred

There are some moments in childhood that are frozen in time, vivid and vital, an anchor. When James tracked down an old Romani wagon he once played in as a boy, he found himself inside one such moment again. Though brambles had overtaken its rotted boards and its wheels were barely there, it transported him to a magical summer in the New Forest forty years ago and awakened in him the possibility of reliving it with his young family. Pairing an ambition to restore the wagon to its former glory with a determination to share the Forest with his children, he embarked on a remarkable journey.

James Aldred grew up on the edge of the New Forest and spent his teenage years exploring it. By fifteen he was building forest shelters, sleeping rough in the woods and spending much of his time up in the branches of trees. These days, he works in the treetops as an Emmy award-winning wildlife cameraman working regularly with National Geographic and the BBC, collaborating on many landmark natural history programmes with David Attenborough. He is also the author of The Man Who Climbs Trees and Goshawk Summer, for which he won the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2022. Goshawk Summer was said by Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk to be 'Magical and transporting and a beautiful and deeply evocative hymn to love, hope and connection.'