Who needs a nature cure when you realise what just reading a Paul Evans column can do for you (Country diary, 22 January)? He begins in poetry and moves through observation, science, Finnish, Anglo-Saxon, conservation and the biblical to the “beyond death” and emotional reassurance for the time of our most delicate vulnerabilities. “The Shropshire miniaturist”, as he was once called, is a post-pastoral shaman who takes us into an awareness of life-in-death that is profoundly healing.

It makes me want to go out and find a “dead” tree in order to “respect the standing dead” with a deepened understanding.
Prof Terry Gifford
Wookey, Somerset