Colin Ward event - February 9

Guardianistas and Five Leaves

Three in a week over at The Guardian. Firstly Five Leaves writer Seth Freedman blows his whistle on the Libor-like wholesale gas price fixing. Front page, inside page, big scandal. Seth has written two books for us (one published in association with the Guardian) - the first was Can I Bring My Own Gun? an account of his time as a volunteer, and ultimately dissident, Israeli soldier. The second book, written with his cousin Josh Berthoud Freedman, was a journey through the Israeli settlements on the West Bank, Forty Years in the Wilderness. There is no truth in the rumour that a book on wholesale gas pricing is to become the third part of a trilogy.
Secondly, Saskia Baron wrote a wonderful piece about her family's history with autism as her father Michael Baron (editor of On a Bat's Wing, poetry about bats, and joint editor of The Night Shift, poetry of the night) was involved in setting up the first specialist school for autistic children and the organisation that became the National Autistic Society. His group has grown from ten people to 20,000 members. Michael is still active on autism, in poetry and in campaigning for peace in the Middle East, steadily compiling an Israeli Jewish and Palestinian poetry book.
Finally, our new book by the late Colin Ward, Talking Green, is Nicholas Lezard's choice of the week. The article is online now and will appear in Saturdays print edition. An excellent and well written review: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/20/talking-green-colin-ward-review.

New from Five Leaves, Talking Green

Talking Schools, Talking Houses, Talking to Architects

... all the subjects of previous sets of lectures by Colin Ward. His interests were far wider than these concerns. Five Leaves alone has published books by him, sometimes with others, on squatting, allotments, the plotlands of the south of England, British holiday camps and anarchism. For various reasons a planned set of lectures on green issues was never published during his lifetime, but we are glad to rectify that omission now.

The twelve essays in

Talking Green cover environmental pollution, urban life, allotments, the uses of nature, land settlement, regionalism, squatting, small-holding, the green personality and the shires of Southern England. Together they provide discussion points for anyone interested in taking green politics further than climate change and recycling (important as these are). Colin Ward connects green politics and lifestyle to everyday living and working, always providing positive proposals for future living. All the essays are based on lectures given by Ward at a

variety of institutions. They are titled:

A Doomwatch for the Pollution of our Land

The Urban Predicament

The Shires of Southern Britain

Who Owns Nature? Possession and Dispossession

The Allotment Garden as a Green Affirmation

A Century of Land-settlement in Essex

Regionalist Seeds Beneath the Centralist Snow

Whose Land is it Anyway?

Small Holdings

The Green Personality

Escaping the City

Is Conservation More Than Nostalgia?

Talking Green is 160 pages, £7.99 and can be ordered from http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/talking-green/ or any good bookshop