With The Lost Words, I had continued to work through Christmas, painting and gilding the magpie on Christmas day with The Lost Spells I spent Christmas with my folks, just a few quiet days. I told Hamish Hamilton that I could meet the deadline, yes, so long as my father’s health stayed as good as it could be. Robert wrote a spell for ‘Thrift’, the beautiful plant, bright pink, that grows on the cliff tops, and said he wrote it with me and pa in mind. He had gone into hospital first in September. My dad had been taken into hospital, very ill his heart was failing. Then I crafted away at a series of small paintings, also for the book, but now I was working on a tiny table in the corner of a bedroom in Broadway. In the end there were 21, including the barn owl spell. We’d been commissioned to produce 12 spells, illustrated. I drew a sketch, then over months worked from my studio beside the sea in Pembrokeshire, seven days a week, growing and shaping work as Robert wrote. The barn owl came to mind, for wisdom, for its hush-wing beauty, for strength, courage, for seeing into the darkness. Robert and I had spoken about a guide for this book, as the goldfinch had been our guide for The Lost Words. The cover sketch came early on, as I played with ideas in a sketchbook. It might easily become lost in the geography of a bookshop’s shelves.

You can fit it in your pocket, take it with you when you walk, read it in wild places, parks, gardens. Our new book, The Lost Spells, is small. It’s hard to miss it in a bookshop, as it doesn’t fit on the shelf, it takes up so much space. The dandelion clock was something I loved as a child, telling the time by blowing the parachute seeds, and the dandelion head sang of loss and hope for me. Goldfinches had been our guides through the book, and they flew through the pages, with their collective noun – a ‘charm’ of finches – linking to the ‘spells’. We needed to find something that would sing of the spells inside. And it’s part of the reason that The Lost Words' cover was designed last of all. Cover of 'The Lost Spells' by Jackie Morris and Robert MacfarlaneĪ book's cover is often how a book and reader first meet.

The lost spells jackie morris