Inspired by the scenery, hidden histories and encounters in his local park in London during the lockdowns – and with nowhere to go – Tom Chesshyre set off on a “voyage of the imagination” around parks he has enjoyed across the globe in his new book Park Life, a celebration of all things park:
It was somewhere between my tenth and twentieth weekly circumnavigation of Richmond Park, having not gone anywhere else much for months (other than my Sainsbury’s Local), that I began to slip into the rhythm of “park life”.
During that period from March 2020, I watched the landscape of London’s largest park (2,400 acres) subtly shift as green shoots of spring slowly emerged, the stark outline of ancient oaks seemingly sprinkled by heavenly herbs.
The park’s deer meandered across the pathways – stags back then in the process of casting off antlers after the autumn ruts and before females gave birth in May.
We (my girlfriend and I) had formed nodding acquaintances with other early-morning weekend regulars, often stopping to chat and making good friends with one fellow walker, who later came for barbecues after the lockdowns.
I had learnt all about Charles I’s unpopular landgrab to form a private hunting ground back in 1637, as well as of a local “park hero” named John Lewis who had fought in the 1750s for the public right to access – with uncanny parallels to protests then being held across the planet, where some local mayors had been foolish enough to shut parks for “health and safety” reasons during the lockdowns.
I had bought books about Richmond Park. I had boned up on bird life and deer. I was becoming, you might say, a proper “park geek”.
As the early summer began, with foreign travel restrictions still in place, while reflecting on how much I was unexpectedly enjoying my local park, I began to cast my mind back to other parks I had visited across the world during 25 years as a travel writer (with notebooks and pictures to prompt memories).
Soon, without quite knowing what was happening, I began “travelling” around the globe – from the confines of my study – re-visiting a succession of wonderful green oases from New York City to Pyongyang, Valencia, Stockholm, Sydney, Beijing, Cape Town, Khartoum, Quito, Berlin, Athens and, even, remote little St Helena deep in the South Atlantic Ocean. Recalling, and writing about, their pleasures, hidden histories, flora and fauna and old encounters. 50 parks, in total.
On this “voyage of the imagination”, framed by the impossibility back then of actually going anywhere, the importance of parks to city life around the world soon came to the fore. After all, 55 per cent of the world lives in cities and this is expected to rise to 68 per cent by 2050, says the United Nations.
Parks soon will be even more key to many of our lives than they are now. So Park Life: Around the World in 50 Parks is a love letter to the world’s urban parks, an exercise in “armchair travel”, and also a call – to any city planners who may happen to read – to make more parks… our cities need them!
- Park Life: Around the World in 50 Parks by Tom Chesshyre is published by Summersdale (£16.99).
Watch Tom Chesshyre introduce his new book:
TOM CHESSHYRE’S TIPS FOR TOP BOOKS FOR URBAN PARK LIFE… AND “VOYAGES OF THE IMAGINATION”
- Park Life: Memoirs of a Royal Parks Gamekeeper by John Bartram, with John Karter (Metro Books, £16.99) – delightful account of life behind the scenes at Richmond Park in London.
- A Walk in the Park: The Life and Times of a People’s Institution by Travis Elborough (Vintage, £10.99) – erudite and comprehensive history of parks that the novelist William Boyd described as “a fascinating, informative, revelatory book”.
- Metropolis: A History of Humankind’s Greatest Invention by Ben Wilson (Vintage, £10.99) – colourfully written history of cities beginning in 4000BC up to the megacities of today, many a park mentioned.
- Cities are Good for You: The Genius of the Metropolis by Leo Hollis (Bloomsbury, £10.99) – intriguing examination of how cities “can make us fitter, richer, smarter, greener, more creative and, perhaps, even happier”.
- Soft City by Jonathan Raban (Panther, £9.99) – part memoir, part travelogue about finding your place in a city, and space to breathe, parks included.
- Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (Vintage, £8.99) – dreamy account of “voyage” to mystical cities, which the novelist Jeanette Winterson rates as “the book I would choose as pillow and plate, alone on a desert island”.
- A Journey Around My Room by Xavier de Maistre (Alma Classics, £7.99) – in which a young officer finds himself confined to his room for six weeks and sets off on imaginative “journeys” prompted by objects he sees around him.
- The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton (Penguin, £10.99) – thought-provoking analysis of that touches on both why and how we travel, described by travel writer Colin Thubron as “an elegant and subtle work… beguiling”.