She owns the land and her love song to the wild rules the twilight. It’s an untamed magic, this conjuring with words and coloured water, chasing ‘the spirit of wild’. Learning the shape of the words and the shape of the fox, so each is drawn from the other, is a wild and a beautiful challenge. Jackie says, '‘Red Fox’ by Robert Macfarlane demands red paint for her bright pelt. Rather than trying to see the fox full and square, it was of course to be about the ways these enigmatic creatures slip in and out of our lives, glimpsed and sensed at the edges of sight and hearing: 'The shadow that slips through a hole in the hedge.'' I saw the blur of a brush, a pair of glowing green eyes, my heart raced – and there was the spell. And then, while I was cycling late one night back down the street near my suburban house, a vixen hurtled across the road in front of me, passing a yard in front of my whirring wheels before vanishing into a neighbour’s garden. ’So let these spells ring far and wide, speak their word and seek their art, let the wild world into your eyes, your voice, your heart’Extracted from The Los. That felt like the right habitat in which to conjure up the fox. Jackie Morris sent me a notebook with her paintings of foxes on its cover and pages.

The introduction of this article was amended on 2 April 2023 to credit Jackie Morris as co-author of the book, in line with the information provided in the subheading and elsewhere in the text.'For several weeks, she wouldn’t break cover, wouldn’t show herself. Robert Macfarlane, who began The Lost Spells when he jotted down some lines about goldfinches while watching over his dying grandmother, said he hoped that it would inspire wonder, hope. It is a reminder that every acorn, tree and dandelion is a world in itself and a sacred part of our own.Īt Watford Palace theatre until 8 April then at Polka theatre, London, 13 April-7 May and Theatre By the Lake, Keswick, 24 May-3 June. “What takes years to grow takes second to crush,” we are told. The nature on our doorstep so often goes unobserved but contains wonders, Jay discovers. There is beautiful puppetry designed by Amber Donovan Kahn and lovely visual abstractions in Hannah Sibai’s set including artfully fluttering ocean waves and a giant luminous globe which looks like an oversized pop-up of Morris’s illustration in the book. Erskine and Dollard’s tunes require sometimes awkward shifts and not every singer hits the most difficult notes but the elegance, invention and abundant sense of magic in this musical wins out. Now, The Lost Spells, a book kindred in spirit and tone, continues to re-wild the lives of children and adults. RT tbtlake: The Lost Spells is on its way to Theatre by the Lake A new musical, created by Matt Borgatti and based on the book by Robert MacFarlane & Jackie Morris. Sweet whimsy dominates the first half, which has a few disjointed moments, but the show gets smoother, picking up its pace. Sweet whimsy … Paula James, Toby De Salis, Miriam Nyarko and Alex Wingfield in The Lost Spells

Robert macfarlane the lost spells