Steve Lunn Talks 'The Price Of Dormice'
15 April 2025
In this Q&A, Steve Lunn discusses his debut novel, his work as a conservationist and re-wilder and more. His debut novel, The Price of Dormice is out to buy now in audio.
We know that readers can expect to see your love for nature in The Price of Dormice, can you describe the problems faced by the nature reserve and its dormice?
The nature reserve is part of a fictional farm in what used to be Oxford's green belt. The farm is owned by equally fictional St Mark's College. The reserve has been managed for many years by the Wildlife Trust. The trust's reserve manager is delighted that a few dormice have recently made their home there.
The tenant farmers are sympathetic to the trust's work. But both farmers and trust are appalled when the city council grants outline planning permission to St Mark's for development of the whole farm. It is to become a science park, techno-incubator hub and retail park. The nature reserve itself will become car park and link road, and the dormice, existentially dependent on very specific habitat, will die. The development will make a lot of money for a few powerful people, including the city's head of planning.
Was there quite a lot of research involved when writing The Price of Dormice?
Masses. Police organisation and methods. Drugs. Weapons. Forensics. Computer security and hacking. Sketching. Pedigree and rescue dogs. Farming and agricultural tenancies. Best conservation practice. Planning procedures. The OxCam Growth Arc, still a real and rather monstrous thing. Financial manoeuvres to inflate asset values: what's legal, what's known to work. Social services' approach to orphaned children, adoption and special guardianship. The fine arts of burglary and blackmail.
How relevant would you say the novel is to today?
Our wildlife faces a daily onslaught, and most of that onslaught comes directly or indirectly from human activity. The Price of Dormice, tells a story - completely fictional - of a group of ordinary people fighting to protect six or seven hazel dormice from one of the worst manifestations of such human activity - the bulldozers of over-development.
Oxford's 'green belt' is now mostly developed, or 'reserved for' or 'allocated to' development. The local authority seems to ignore the strongest objections from the Environment Agency, wildlife organisations and many others, and pushes through massive developments with a strong following wind created by the UK's answer to Silicon Valley. Also known as the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Arc, this will concentrate 35% of UK growth to 2050 in the five counties of Oxon, Bucks, Beds, Northants and Cambs.
The Arc originated with the Labour government in 2003/4 and was picked up enthusiastically by the Conservatives in their 14-year tenure - until they spotted its incompatibility with their 'levelling up' rhetoric and disappeared it. It has recently returned to the spotlight in the current government's growth-at-any-cost agenda.
The last time figures were mentioned (in the Michael Gove era), the Arc was to bring 1.1 million new homes and around 2.5 million new people to the area. Of the new homes, 400,000 were to be in Oxfordshire, in addition to existing housing targets for local needs. So we're looking at the approximate equivalent of seven new Oxfords in Oxfordshire.
I sometimes mention this in talks to local people. Sometimes a few have heard of it, but few realise its scale, and that it is just beginning to effect lives across the area. Most think they should have a say in something like this happening in their home county.
People need homes and jobs, of course. But we need the right homes and the right jobs in the right places. We need infrastructure such as schools, GP surgeries and sewage treatment capacity in place before the kids are at the school gate, the doctors have all gone down with stress, and the new loos are flushed - not three decades later. And we need to respect and protect the creatures with whom we share our space on the planet.
So The Price of Dormice is more a story about people than about dormice: on one hand, people who believe that dormice have just as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as we do; and on the other, already very well-heeled people who believe that more money will make their lives better, and don't care about much else.
Do you see any of yourself in the character, Mick?
Not really, except perhaps in relation to values, love of dogs, and respect for grandfatherly and Confucian wisdom. I'm nowhere near as resourceful, brave and effective as Mick, and to be honest he's not very resourceful, brave and effective either.
Mick grew from a composite of a few people I am or have been very close to: my bosom buddy of forty-five years; the best software guy I worked with in twenty-odd years in that business; and close family members.
Can you tell us a bit about Conrad and Kimberley’s relationship in The Price of Dormice?
Conrad, the city's head of planning, is driven, ruthless and impatient - to the point that he's on the brink of fury almost every moment of every day. To his wife Kimberly he is controlling, cruel and violent. To their children he is harsh and arbitrary.
From Mick's point of view, Kimberly chooses a fateful time to demand a divorce from Conrad. The couple are driving into Wolvercote, where Mick is waiting to cross the road. As Kimberly explains to Mick, ‘I’d just told him I wanted out, as we came over the bridge. Wanted a divorce. And he said, “Where would you go? Who’d have you? And your brats?” And I said, “There’s a very nice young man in this village, actually. I see him every day. In fact, there he is.” Because there you were. I’m sorry. I knew he wouldn’t believe me if I said I’d never actually met you, so I didn’t.’
Mick can see how her husband got the wrong end of the stick. ‘You see me every day?’ he asks.
‘On the school run, with the kids. You’re usually at the bus stop,’ she says.
As well as being a writer, you’re also a conservationist and re-wilder, can you tell us anything about what you do?
We've helped our garden in Wolvercote to rewild itself for 30 years, and I help friends around the country with theirs.
I volunteer with BBOWT, our local wildlife trust, for example doing regular water vole surveys.
And I'm a 'Friend' of Burgess Field, a council-owned reserve between Oxford's Port Meadow and the railway. Forty-five years ago it was an active municipal dump: now it's a lovely place, peaceful and full of birdsong and blossom in spring, a haven for summer and winter visitors and migrants, with foxes, badgers, and various smaller mammals, but no dormice.
The Friends do a lot of habitat creation and maintenance work on scrub, hedges, trees, flowers, working within a developing long-term vision that goes by the name 'Nightingale Dreams'. We try to look forward to what could happen over the next fifty years, and steer our planting and tending towards habitat like managed thickets that might suit passing nightingales and, with the reserve's plentiful seeding herbs, turtle doves; thickets and hazel coppice that might suit dormice; and encouraging more poplars around those already there, so that golden orioles pushed north by overheating in Europe might find suitable lodging. We know full well that these 'star attraction' species may never bless us with their presence, but the work we do for them will be good for lots of other species too. And we're quite sure that many of the current Friends won't be around to see it come to fruition, but have faith that someone will, with two legs or four.
Do you have any other books in the pipeline?
I'm working on a sequel to The Price of Dormice with the working title The Tufton Street Massacre, featuring Mick and his friends and relations. It probably won't feature an actual massacre, but I've not written that bit yet. I also have more short stories in the pipeline, to follow We're Not Getting Divorced and other stories, a collection published last year.