Drawn to Nature with Caroline Quentin

The Actress Who Says a Garden Saved Her Mind

Caroline Quentin spent decades making audiences laugh, as Dorothy opposite Neil Morrissey in Men Behaving Badly, as Maddie Magellan solving cases in Jonathan Creek, then earning a Laurence Olivier nomination for her Mrs Malaprop in the National Theatre's Jack Absolute Flies Again. Off screen she talks about something quieter: her mother was bipolar, and Quentin has spoken openly about her own emotional volatility, and about how stepping outside, listening to birdsong, standing under an old tree, is what steadies her.

That territory is the subject of her new book, Drawn to Nature, out this October from Frances Lincoln and following on from her Sunday Times bestseller Drawn to the Garden. Structured through the colours of the rainbow and illustrated throughout with her own watercolours, it moves between memoir and practical advice for anyone with a garden, a windowsill of pots, or just a habit of going outside. At Townsend Hall, ahead of the book's publication, she's in conversation with fellow author Caroline Mills, whose own book This Is Not Our Land charts thirty years farming a Cotswold smallholding with her partner Paul.

Two women who've each built a living, and by their own account a steadier mind, around paying close attention to the ground under their feet.

Saturday 19 September 2026 · Townsend Hall, Sheep Street, Shipston on Stour, Warwickshire CV36 4AE · Starts 2pm