THE SEASON TO RETREAT AND REPAIR

After the gruelling experience of lockdown, Katherine May’s gorgeous reflection on the season of darkness, hardship and ghost stories, out now in paperback, feels incredibly poignant.

But Wintering (thetitlecomesfroma Sylvia Plath poem) is much more than a study of a few cold, sunlight-deprived months that many of us find difficult. It’s also about how to survive adversity: “Everybody winters at one time or another; some winter over and over again,” she writes.

May is frank about her struggles, including work stress and a “chronic sense of unbelonging”, and mixes memoir with insights gained from the rhythms of nature and from other people’s ways of wintering well. Finns begin their winter prep – foraging, pickling, wood-stacking – back in August. A modern