Bonnie Lander Johnson | Vanishing Landscapes
Sat 22 Nov 2025 | 2:00pm - 3:00pm
Once, we knew the landscape and the plants around us as intimately as we knew ourselves. From apples and saffron to the timber that built our homes and the wheat that made our bread, plants shaped our daily lives. Today, much of that knowledge and intimacy has faded.
In Vanishing Landscapes, Bonnie Lander Johnson, Fellow and Associate Professor at Downing College, Cambridge, tells the story of how our bond with nature unravelled, through the histories of seven plants, including saffron, wheat and woad. Along the way, she meets farmers in Ireland, winemakers in Yorkshire, cloth dyers in the Highlands, and cuts reeds in the Norfolk fens.
This is a journey into how we became modern, but also a tender reminder that it isn’t too late to find our way back. Join Bonnie for a fascinating exploration of a world we may never have fully known, but one we still long for.
In conversation with Alex Clark.
Venue: Old Divinity School
Duration: 1 hour
Tickets available soon.
Speaker Biography
Bonnie Lander Johnson is Fellow and Associate Professor at Downing College, Cambridge University, where she teaches the literature and history of the early modern period and represents the University on the BBC/Cambridge National Short Story Award. Her academic books include Botanical Culture and Popular Belief in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge University Press), The Cambridge Handbook to Literature and Plants, Chastity in Early Stuart Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press) and Blood Matters (University of Pennsylvania Press). Bonnie is also a fiction and non-fiction writer. Her work has appeared in Hinterland, The Belfast Review, Howl and Dappled Things, and her fiction has been shortlisted for The Royal Society of Literature’s V. S. Pritchett Prize and The Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize.
Chair Biography
Alex Clark is a broadcaster and journalist, who writes for many publications including the Guardian, the Observer, and the Times Literary Supplement. She is a co-host on the Graham Norton Book Club for Audible and hosts the TLS podcast. She is a professional chairperson and appears all over the UK at Edinburgh, Hay and the Southbank Centre. Alex is a festival honorary patron.
