EXCLUSIVE: Germaine Greer, Bloomsbury Book Club

Pre-eminent academic, critic and writer Germaine Greer comes to the Bloomsbury Book Club in March to discuss her new book White Beech: The Rainforest Years, released amid huge buzz this month and serialised as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week at the end of January. 

Part mini-memoir and part passionate botanical essay, it’s the story of a renegade conservation project Greer embarked upon in her native Australia thirteen years ago, and which has now seen a former industrial valley in South East Queensland restored to riotous bio-diversity.

Exasperated by media stories of impending environmental catastrophe, Greer bought 60 hectares of abandoned dairy farm in the Gondwana Rainforest back in 2001, in order, she has said, “ to give the forest back to itself ”. White Beech traces this dizzily quixotic undertaking from its outset, with the selling off of Greer’s archives in order to finance it, to the gradual return of plant and animal life she sees as having been ‘waiting for someone to do this’. 

In this Bloomsbury evening, Greer will be discussing what’s now the Cave Reek Rainforest Rehabilitation Programme, as well as the historical interconnectedness of feminism and conservation, with her Bloomsbury editor Michael Fishwick.  

There’s an intimacy to the Bloomsbury Institute’s author events which, owing to their sheer popularity and the huge demand for tickets, is a beautiful and curious achievement. Cosmopolitan, relaxed, and served up with a snifter of complementary wine, these events are a serious contender for our favourite literary evening in London.

Exclusive Culture Whisper members' offer : tickets  £20 including a hardback book and wine (usually £25).