1611. Celia Lamprey looks out across the rooftops of Aleppo for the last time. After ten years living in the Orient, she and her husband, Paul Pindar, are setting sail for England �? taking with them the legendary diamond, the Sultan's Blue, despite the curse that surrounds it. They arrive to find a country much changed; Bishopsgate, once surrounded by fields, is now a muddy thoroughfare choked with carriages �? from which carpenters, gardeners...

One bright day in December 2001, 62-year-old Germaine Greer found herself confronted by an irresistible challenge in the shape of 60 hectares of dairy farm, one of many in south-east Queensland that, after a century of logging, clearing and downright devastation, had been abandoned to their fate. When the first replanting shot up to make a forest and rare caterpillars turned up to feed on the leaves of the new young trees, she knew beyond doubt that...