To Have or To Hold: Nature's Hidden Relationships

LONGLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION WRITING
A BBC WILDLIFE BEST BOOK OF 2025

A thrilling exploration of nature’s symbiotic relationships by the award-winning author of Forget Me Not.

What can nature teach us about living together? Investigating eight symbiotic relationships trying to survive the climate and biodiversity crises, Sophie Pavelle explains why it has never been more vital for us to understand symbiosis. Symbiotic relationships regulate ecosystems, strengthen resilience and bind pivotal connections, and nature thrives on relationships as glamorous as they are grotesque and as bizarre as they are engrossing.

Symbiotic relationships don't happen accidentally – these dynamics evolved – and species form and sever alliances everywhere, from deep within temperate rainforests to the open ocean, quiet tidal pools or chalk grasslands.

In To Have or To Hold, Sophie low-carbon travels in the British Isles relishing the interconnectedness between species, celebrating the relationships underpinning natural environments and sharing some of nature’s frauds, fortune-tellers, misfits and cheaters.

The natural world is built on parasitism, a cunning blend of bargaining and exploitation in the name of survival. In our relationship with the natural world, are we the parasites? Will we continue to exploit nature’s resources? Or will we vow to love and cherish what remains – shaping a more restorative life alongside nature – till death us do part?