Merlin Hanbury-Tenison

My beavers have been kidnapped. A few months ago there were five of them living on my family’s farm on Bodmin Moor. Now there are none. I know where they are and I have received proof of life from their kidnapper, but he will not release them back to me or allow me to collect

It is a moment of cautious and much-contested transition in our Covid saga. I don’t mean the move from lockdown to a slightly more ‘nation as usual’ situation that’s being thrashed out in parliament, but in my father, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, and his mode of transport from mobility scooter to ‘yomping with confidence’. In the last ten

This morning was the first time that my father, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, had ventured beyond his veranda since coming home two weeks ago from a Covid-induced stay at Plymouth Hospital. He’s very weak but we’ve borrowed a mobility scooter from a local friend and I convinced him to take a turn of the garden with me

Today is my father, Robin Hanbury-Tenison’s, 84th birthday and miraculously he was able to wake up in his own bed and listen to the spring warbling of a green woodpecker while watching the swallows cavorting on the veranda in front of his bedroom. He was brought home three days ago in an ambulance having spent

‘There is a giant python slithering across the foot of my hospital bed. It’s at least eight feet long and it’s looking right at me.’ My father, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, is recovering from Covid-19 at Plymouth’s Derriford Hospital so it’s highly unlikely that there are any giant reptiles in his acute ward. He’s been there for

‘Well that’s obviously an azalea. Give me a harder one.’ I’m on one of my daily rehab walks around our garden on Bodmin Moor with my father, Robin Hanbury-Tenison. He’s not actually with me, he’s over 20 miles away at Derriford Hospital where he has been battling coronavirus for the last six weeks, but since

‘Now I can believe I’m alive.’ These were the first words I heard my father speak in over a month. It was 7.15 on Wednesday morning and I was just clambering out of bed for my morning jog on Bodmin Moor. I am lucky in that I can run a few miles down to an

Spring is my father’s favourite season. After the wet and dark winter we’ve had I imagine it will be the time that most people in the UK have been looking forward to. On our farm in Cornwall, spring is a particularly easy moment to love. There are currently hundreds of lambs gambolling through our fields,

I just spoke to my father for the first time in 16 days. He wasn’t able to speak back but the nurse told me that he smiled when he heard my voice. This is the first sign of consciousness we’ve had from him since he was sedated over two weeks ago to help his body

‘Your father is remarkable for his age’. I wouldn’t be able to count the number of times someone has said that to me over the last 20 years. It must be in the thousands. Everyone from the postman to fellow explorers to other farmers on Bodmin Moor. He has always been seen as invincible, indomitable

My father Robin Hanbury-Tenison had a podcast interview with The Spectator on Monday. He has a new book out – on pandemics, rather well timed – about which Sam Leith of this parish was keen to interview him. But in the end he had to postpone it. On Monday, he couldn’t get a sentence out without uncontrollably coughing.