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 them and bring them home. I miss them and often walk along their stretch of river and past their dams with a tear in my eye. I miss them and often walk along their stretch of river and past their dams with a tear in my eye I was quite early to the beaver game.

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 days, he has shifted from merely surviving the virus back towards thriving in his old youthful manner. It will still be some months before he is the vigorous and inexhaustible octogenarian that we took for granted in February but every day marks a small step forward in his journey back to health. The shift from bed-bound, to scooter, to zimmer frame, to walking stick has been Lazarus-esque.

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 to smell the flowers and see what’s blooming. He visibly perked up while navigating our gravel paths and pointed out ragged robin, purple loosestrife and wood anemones, all of which have sprung forth while he lay sedated in intensive care. I trotted along beside him vigilantly, ever ready to throw my shoulder into the scooter if it looked like he was going to turn it and tumble down one of our precipitous slopes.

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 seven weeks flickering between life and death while battling Covid-19 at Derriford Hospital. I would be lying if I pretended my, usually unshakable, faith in his invincibility hadn’t wavered at several points during this ordeal. Many tears of joy and relief were shed as he was wheeled out by a paramedic on Monday evening and given back to us. My wife, Lizzie, and I live a stone’s throw away from my parents across our farmyard on Bodmin Moor.

‘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 over six weeks now and has been conscious for the last two and able to speak with his family on video calls.  At first, this was just the occasional rasped sentence as he struggled to push words out through his tracheotomy and the nurses held the telephone for him, but we have watched with joy and relief as he has gained in strength with every day that passes. Now he is almost in full control of his body and mind.

‘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 he was moved out of intensive care and into a rehabilitation ward he’s been given his telephone back and we can speak every day by video call. It’s truly heart-warming to be able to speak to him at all and there were many moments over the last few weeks when I feared I might never be able to again.

‘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 old china clay quarry on the moors with a trusty labrador and two terriers in tow without seeing a single other human being. My telephone rang and I noticed it was a Plymouth number, likely heralding a call from Derriford Hospital where my 83-year-old father, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, has been fighting coronavirus since mid-March. He has been sedated and on a ventilator for most of that time, has suffered multiple organ failures, needed a tracheotomy and has now been struggling to wake up for almost two weeks.

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, countless teddy bear-like Highland calves sticking close to their protective mothers for safety and the wildflowers are all beginning to stretch and yawn as they begin to wake up from their long sleep. The first bluebells have begun to pepper the verges with their deep shades and red campion is joining them to create the cartoonish pink alongside the bucolic blue. My father’s wake from the induced coma due to his coronavirus ordeal has been less smooth.

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 fight the coronavirus that has been running through his veins. During that time his lungs failed and a ventilator had to take over all of his breathing. A few days later his kidneys ceased to function properly and he was put on full dialysis. His muscles have atrophied and, even with the NHS angels who watch over him every day moving his limbs, his body has become weaker than it’s ever been before.

‘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 and perennially young. A man who has behaved like a 30-year-old well into later life. When I wrote a week ago that he had been rushed to Plymouth Hospital in an ambulance, sedated and placed on a ventilator due to complications arising from coronavirus, well-wishers were all positive and even upbeat about the situation. ‘If anyone can beat this, Robin can!’, ‘Your father is an ox!

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. He had just come back from skiing in France, and the government advice still said that the Alps were safe. He and my mother had considered cancelling, but their insurance wouldn’t have given them a refund. So they were careful to always wash their hands thoroughly and didn’t go to any large gatherings. Besides, though he is 83 years old, he’s the fittest man I know.