Rosie Boycott
The Call of the Wild
Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder
By Richard Louv
Atlantic Books 390pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
When I was a child, I spent most of my time outdoors. I had tree houses and houses made of straw bales in a nearby barn. A friend owned two ponies: together we'd ride for hours, constructing fantasies of being knights of old or Wild-West cowboys. I went fishing in a local stream with my father, catching the occasional trout and cooking it over a fire hastily constructed out of sticks, and eating it on the spot – just minutes after it had been swimming upstream. At night I'd fall asleep planning what I'd do in the great outdoors the following day.
I thought it was a normal childhood (and I thought it quite normal that we'd all occasionally break an arm or an ankle), but reading Richard Louv's American bestseller, Last Child in the Woods, has made me see just how privileged it was. Today's children might be well
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Surveillance, facial recognition and control: my review of @jonfasman's "We See It All" https://literaryreview.co.uk/watching-the-watchers via @Lit_Review
I reviewed Diary of a Film by Niven Govinden for @Lit_Review https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-directors-cut
'Retired judges have usually had long careers on the bench, during which they have acquired an ingrained reticence when it comes to speaking on controversial topics. Not so Sumption.'
Dominic Grieve reviews Jonathan Sumption's 'Law in a Time of Crisis'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-case-for-the-citizen