Chloe Dalton talks to Jane Shaw

Writer and foreign policy advisor Chloe Dalton tells how Covid lockdown turned her from a busy career-focused Londoner into the guardian of a baby hare in the heart of the countryside.

Dalton explains how lockdown led her to return to the countryside of her childhood. She felt compelled to give a baby hare a chance of survival after finding it endangered and alone. Dalton explores the value of slowing down, of finding beauty in the commonplace and of setting free the things we love. And she advocates for a closed season on shooting hares, which she says leads to tens of thousands of leverets dying because their mothers have been killed during the breeding season.

‘This book is exceptional. It made me smile out loud, such a magical tale of a world turned upside down by a fragile wild thing – a leveret lost, a life found. A simply wonderful story, profoundly beautiful’ Chris Packham

Dalton spent more than a decade working for prominent figures in the UK parliament and in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Here she talks to Professor Jane Shaw, principal of Harris Manchester College and professor of the history of religion at the University of Oxford.