Pollard is the debut novel of Laura Beatty, first published in hardback in 2008 by Chatto & Windus and the following year in paperback by Vintage Books.

[1] This was her first novel though she had previously written biographies.

It won the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize[2] The novel concerns Anne, a teenager who leaves her chaotic home life and finds sanctuary in the nearby woods where she makes a new life for herself, foraging and hunting for food and building a house...

The author lives in Salcey Forest in Northamptonshire, one of the few remaining medieval hunting forests in England and which provided the inspiration for the novel, including a tree-top walkway and survival courses.

[3]