About the event

The re-emergence of boar in the forest has been controversial but award winning author Chantal Lyons wants us to look at them with fresh eyes

Chantal Lyons, award winning author of Groundbreakers will be joining us in conversation about her award winning book and her upcoming new book about mega fauna.

Below is the blurb for "Groundbreakers"

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After centuries of absence, wild boar are back in Britain. What does this mean for us – and them?

Big, messy and mysterious – crossing paths with a wild boar can conjure fear and joy in equal measure. Driven to extinction seven hundred years ago, a combination of the species' own tenacity and illegal releases from the 1980s has seen several populations of this beast of myth begin to roam English and Scottish woods once more.

With growing worry over the impacts on both people and the countryside, the boar's right to exist in Britain has been heavily debated. Their habitat-regenerating actions benefit a host of other wildlife, yet unlike beavers, these ecosystem engineers remain unloved by many. Why is there no clamour to reintroduce them across the land? And, with the few boar in England threatened by poaching and culling, why are we not doing more to prevent their re-extinction?