Francis’s childhood home was full of animals: the brilliantly intelligent sheepdog, Balthazar; a tank of tropical fish; a tortoise slowly exploring the garden, and a nervous albino rabbit, Alphonso, who died by nibbling voraciously through an electric cable. Without sheep to work with, Balthazar practised herding the hens that Francis’s mother kept, until she finally asked his father to put up a fence between them. Although Francis was only six, he was invited to help.

His father took to the hammer with uncharacteristic ferocity, frightening Francis with his strange atmosphere. After a few violent blows, he apologised, explaining that the bank had repossessed a farm belonging to a family he had known all his life: they had fought so hard to keep it and he felt guilty about his failure to protect them. ‘Let’s measure out the fence,’ he said, in a calmer voice; ‘you can cut the wire.’ By Sunday afternoon they had completed the job: half a dozen willow stakes, connected by three rows of gleaming wire, curving across the end of the garden. At first it all seemed rather stark and new, but then in the spring Francis saw the bare stakes, which had appeared to be old timber, coming back to life; they were sprouting and turning into willow trees. This early experience of regeneration had a strong impact on his imagination and connected the landscape at Howorth with his own deep past, making the differences between his current home and his childhood home less important than their shared regenerative power.