Fiann Ó Nualláin reveals his riveting reads for nature lovers

Each week this column sprouts up from my experiences with gardening and nature, health, herbs and food and on occasion I crowbar in a little bit of Irish history and culture.

They are the topics that fire my brain. Every year at this time my colleagues and I take a break from our normal columns and look at recommending some books for the Christmas stocking. So it won’t come as a surprise that all of the above are the themes of my book picks.

I was involved in a road traffic accident in my 20s that left me with chronic pain for well over a decade. I had read somewhere that chanteuse Marlene Dietrich, who was in such chronic pain that she needed to be wrapped in tight bandages and fed relief in the dressing room, then guided slowly and patiently to the backstage supported by two helpers and then as good as carried into the wings, effing and blinding all the way.