News and Events
Talking About Death - Marion Shoard Appears on BBC Radio 4's Women's Hour
How can middle-aged children cope psychologically with the death of their parents for the remainder of their own lives? How can families deal with the taboo surrounding death which has replaced the taboo on sex in recent years?
Marion Shoard discussed these matters on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour on June 28th.
Click here to listen to the broadcast and for more information.
Why the outdoors is important
The April issue of Trail magazine features the response of a range of people whose work is inspired by an attraction for the outdoors just what it is that fires them up.
The Poetry of the Edgelands
In 2002 Marion Shoard wrote an award-winning essay entitled Edgelands, which she discussed on such programmes as Newsnight, Thinking Allowed and Start The Week.Now, poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmonds Roberts have written a book called Edgelands: Journeys into England’s True Wilderness, which explores the role of the unique environment of the edgelands in our cultural imagination.
You can read Marion's essay about the Edgelands and her review for The Observer of Farley and Symmonds Roberts' book and you can listen to an interview with Marion and the poets about the edgelands broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Open Country programme on 26 March, 2011.
The impact of the right to roam legislation
What has been the impact of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act's 'right to roam' legislation in England and Wales?
Marion Shoard discusses this question with the features editor of Trail magazine, Phoebe Smith, during a trek across previously inaccessible grouse moor in Lancashire's Forest of Bowland. Marion urges Trail readers to make use of newly accessible areas such as this in the November 2010 issue of Trail.
This article and its photographs are reproduced courtesy of Trail magazine, whose website can be found at www.ltfo.com
Lifetime Achievement Award
Receiving the Outdoor Writers & Photographers Guild - Golden Eagle Award from Guild president, Roly Smith. Photo by Jon Sparks
On November 7th, 2009 Marion Shoard was presented with the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild’s lifetime achievement award at the Guild’s annual awards ceremony.
The award takes the form of an original landscape painting by David Bellamy of a place selected by the winner featuring a golden eagle flying overhead; she asked David to paint a scene on North Uist in the Outer Hebrides.
Previous winners of this particular award – the Golden Eagle award for lifetime achievement in the outdoors field – have included Sir Chris Bonington CBE , Sir David Attenborough, Doug Scott CBE and the late Chris Brasher CBE.
Marion was the first solo woman to have received the award. The winner is selected as a result of voting by the OWPG’s members..
In her speech Marion drew attention to what she saw as a new ‘Theft of the Countryside’ 
.