Dalton, who has worked for over a decade as a parliamentary and Foreign Office policy advisor and speech-writer, found herself raising a leveret in lockdown. Her minimalist approach to this intervention was designed to allow the animal to remain wild – yet it still comes to snooze in her house, and has raised leverets that treat Dalton’s small converted barn as their own. Dalton writes about this pre-lapsarian state of grace with effortless elegance and clarity.