Folk, faith, and hedges
With Richard Negus, Danielle Giles, and Rowley Leigh
I spent much of last weekend tearing up — not because of sadness, but because my TikTok algorithm rightly identified that I was a sucker for emotional videos of the London Marathon.
Two strangers carrying an exhausted third over the finish line, a girl breaking down into tears when she saw her family supporting on the sidelines, people on the escalators of a tube station applauding a guy heading home with his medal. It all got me: the inherent sweetness of humanity that drove thousands to gather in the Saturday heat to cheer for people they’ve never met.
I think what made me most emotional — perhaps even more so than the endurance of runners or the worthy charities they were running for — were the displays of kindness. London gets a bad rep for unfriendliness, but here they were: handing out water bottles on a punishing stretch, spending pocket money on bags of sweets to offer from the side of the road, reading names off t-shirts to give total strangers a shout of encouragement.
It can be hard to see cosmopolitan London as a community given its scale and pace — but this was community at its best. People showing up because they knew they were needed, without expecting anything in return. It’s almost enough to make you want to run the marathon yourself, to feel a smidge of that support.
Almost.
Sadia Nowshin
Junior Editor
Richard Negus recalls being a boy inside a hedge
An excerpt from Richard Negus' brilliant forthcoming book Words From the Hedge, A Hedgelayer's View of the Countryside, which will be published on May 1 by Unbound
It is an otherworldly sensation, entering a hedge, as opposed to going around, over or along one. The last three are very human acts that any walker, horse rider or cyclist can do. Yet to physically climb inside a hedge, to be enveloped by the meeting arches of interwoven lattice, the plucking thorns, desiccated leaves, tight-balled nests and bramble, allows you to become a mouse and to join the ranks of hedgepig or weasel. Grown-ups have forgotten this sensation. Adults are stiff and creaky, they find such adventures too sharp and bloody, they fear the spiders, and for their eyes. But for small boys, with scant regard for claustrophobia and dog rose lacerations, the heart of a hedge is a wonderful world.
I creep in a frog-like crouch, back parallel with the earth and leaf litter. I keep my head lowered, eyes up, to see where I am going, through a flopping fringe. I can see a sliver of cerulean plastic fertiliser sack skewered to a blackthorn spine. For six feet I scrabble and scratch along in my amphibious gait until I reach the marker, pockmarked by a yellow silky ball. Spiderlings erupt into scattering thousands when I touch the flag I had set there as a visual reminder. Beneath the flap of polythene, on the crack ling earth, lies a rectangular box. It is partially camouflaged with twigs and leaves; branches of blackthorn provide further top cover. One third of the oblong is a deep, matt, Scots-pine green, the rest an opaque brown. I gingerly creep my arm forward; despite the caution, I still feel the blackthorn’s cat claws tug at my skin and raise scarlet weals. My fingers close around the box and I draw it out with even greater care. With no room to move in this prickly tunnel, I leave the way I went in, backwards frogging.
Richard Negus is a hedgelayer and conservationist. His debut book, Words from the Hedge, will be out on 1 May and is currently available to pre-order
What the land actually means
On the latest episode of the Boundless Podcast, Erica Wagner and Patrick Galbraith chat about his unexpectedly controversial new book, Uncommon Ground
Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts
Have a read of Timothy O’Grady’s review of Uncommon Ground here, who finds it to be a fascinating adventure around Britain — despite the typos
The saints and the earth
Danielle Giles on co-existing contradictions between folk and faith
We’ve been walking in the marsh for about three hours now. It doesn’t feel like three hours. Instead, I might have been out here only half an hour, or perhaps an entire day.
It’s December and the fog, which seemed passable and romantic when viewed from an A-road, is so thick that it obscures everything but what lies a few metres ahead of us. We slingshot from signpost to signpost and hope, each time, that we are travelling in the right direction.
We are in the Meres and Mosses, the evocatively named area in the midlands which is as much marsh as dry land. A sign tells us that the Victorians discovered bog bodies nearby, preserved perfectly for thousands of years, and indeed there is something here that demands respect. I feel it when we turn at a crossroads and I throw out a quick prayer that this is the correct path. I feel it when the fog lifts and the marshland is revealed at last, silvery pools and sharp-edged reeds – a great gratitude aimed at no-one in particular apart from what surrounds me.
It is only when I sit down that evening to write that I feel a jolt of recognition. I am researching early medieval religion, and amongst headless saints and much-suffering martyrs, there are hints of something else, of pre-Christian belief systems. Wicked elves shooting invisible arrows, giants out in the mist. Magic employed by priests that requires intense knowledge of the landscape around them.
And much of it is familiar. The urge to connect to a place, the ability to hold multiple, sometimes conflicting facts at the same time. Just as we might go to church and check our horoscope on the same day, so people a millennia ago warded off evil with magic spells as well as holy prayers. The more I researched Old English prayers, spells and poems, the more I found an inspiration in their ability to exist, sometimes even thrive, in these in-between spaces.
Danielle Giles was born in Germany and grew up in Bristol, where she currently lives. Her short fiction has appeared in Extra Teeth and Dear Damsels, and been shortlisted for various prizes. Her first novel, Mere, was published by Mantle in April 2025
She is currently reading Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White
Torta Pasqualina, from Rowley Leigh’s A Long and Messy Business
I had fun making this. I have to admit it took time, probably the best part of two hours, but I am not a believer that everything should be quick and easy. This is not difficult but it is time-consuming. It should be remembered that the pride one gets from making something is usually in direct proportion to the effort that went into it.
Serves eight.
650g (1lb 7oz) ‘00’ flour
½ teaspoon salt
30ml (1fl oz) olive oil
400g (14oz) ricotta
2 lemons
10 baby artichokes
250ml white wine
1 large bunch of Swiss chard
1kg (2lb 4oz) spinach
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
30ml (1fl oz) olive oil, plus extra for brushing
½ nutmeg, grated
100g (3½oz) Parmesan cheese, grated
10 eggs
1 tablespoon milk
salt and black pepper
Sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl. Add the olive oil and 350ml (12fl oz) very cold water and knead into a strong dough that collects easily into a ball. Divide the dough to produce eight small balls. Cover these with a damp cloth while you prepare the filling.
Place the ricotta in a mixing bowl and finely grate the zest from both lemons over it. Use their juice to prepare and cook the artichokes. Wash the chard in cold water. Slice quite finely, then drop into a large pot of salted water and drain as soon as it is tender.
Pick the stalks off the spinach and wash the leaves well. Drop these into boiling water, then as soon as they wilt transfer them into ice-cold water. Drain, squeezing out the water, and chop the leaves coarsely.
In a saucepan, stew the onion in the olive oil gently for 10 minutes without allowing it to colour, then add the artichokes, chard and spinach. Season well with salt, pepper and the grated nutmeg. Allow to cool a little before adding to the ricotta mixture. Mix very well, then add the grated Parmesan cheese and 3 eggs, beaten. Mix again and taste for seasoning.
Preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F, Gas Mark 5). Brush the inside of a 23cm (9in) springform tart tin with olive oil. Roll out the first ball of dough until it is very thin and flexes like filo or strudel dough. Ease it into the tin, ensuring a good 4cm (11⁄2in) overhang all the way around.
Brush this with more oil and repeat the process for the next three balls of dough. Fill the tart with the filling, then make six deep indentations, evenly spaced out, and crack an egg into each one.
Proceed to cover the pie with another four layers of dough, brushing each one with oil, as before. With a pair of scissors, cut around the perimeter so there is only 2cm (3⁄4in) of overhang. Roll this up and crimp it to make a raised border around the pie.
Mix the remaining egg with the milk and brush over the surface of the pie – and any decorative bits of pastry you want to add. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes. Make sure the centre, when tested with a skewer, is very hot, then allow to cool before serving.
Rowley Leigh’s A Long and Messy Business was published by Unbound in 2018