Nick Acheson grew up in wellies, watching bog bush-crickets in North Norfolk. A year spent in the Camargue during his degree inspired him to seek wilder landscapes and for ten glorious years he lived in Bolivia. Since returning to the UK he has worked the world over, from Arctic tundras to the Antarctic. He proudly works closely with Norfolk Wildlife Trust, for whom he regularly features in local press and media.
Jane Adams grew up in an overcrowded London suburb with an unexplained love of all things wild. It took forty years before her passion properly surfaced after moving to an old house on the south coast with a rambling, wild garden. Now a self-confessed middle-aged wildlife nerd, her interests include photography, social media, writing, trail running and nature conservation. @wildlifestuff
Neil Ansell left London to live alone in the remote wilds of the Welsh countryside without electricity, gas, water, transport or a phone. After five years of semi-isolation, he wrote Deep Country (2011), recounting his experiences and reflecting on man’s relationship with nature. He is now an award-winning journalist, working with the BBC, Guardian and New Statesman among others.
David Gwilym Anthony, author of three books of poetry including Passing through the Woods (Matador, 2012), was born in Ffestiniog, North Wales, brought up in Hull and studied modern history at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. He lives in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, near the churchyard where Thomas Gray, author of Elegy in a Country Churchyard, is buried.
Laurence Arnold has an affinity for the misunderstood creatures in nature and escapes the day job by volunteering to count bats and reptiles at the London Wetland Centre and eels on the Hogsmill. He enjoys photography and using old film cameras, cycling, pretending to be Basque and once appeared on Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out.
Paul Ashton is currently head of Biology at Edge Hill University. A native of Lancashire, previous study and employment saw him happily exiled to Scotland and Norfolk before returning to the North West. For over twenty years he has striven to fire an enthusiasm for plants, evolution and conservation in his students, a mission he is still energetically engaged in.
Louise Baker is the granddaughter of a naturalist, a mother to two small, curious boys, and a freelance writer with an interest in childhood and the natural world, and how the two collide. As well as writing for a variety of clients Louise volunteers her services to the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, and keeps a blog, ‘The Many Adventures of Lexi and Tubs’, to document the family’s wild adventures.
Ginny Battson is a professional nature and landscape photographer with a lifelong love of wildlife, especially that of woodlands and watery habitats. Her passions include environmental ethics, ecoliteracy and being a mother. She enjoys walking, wading, observing and writing her blog seasonalight.wordpress.com. She lived in the US and New Zealand before returning to live in Wales.
Adrian Bell (d. 1980) was a Suffolk farmer and journalist who wrote over twenty-five ruralist books, including Corduroy (1930) Silver Ley (1931) and The Cherry Tree (1932), which together form his farm trilogy. He was the first person to compile the now legendary Times crossword, setting over 5,000 puzzles and helping to develop the cryptic clue style.
Kate Blincoe is a nature-loving mother of two and freelance writer for publications such as the Guardian. She is the author of The No-Nonsense Guide to Green Parenting and is never happier than when exploring the countryside with her family.
Alison Brackenbury is the author of seven collections of poetry, for which she has been the recipient of several awards. Born in Lincolnshire, she was educated at Oxford and now lives in Gloucestershire.
Will Burns was brought up in Buckinghamshire. He is the Poet-in-Residence at Caught by the River and in 2014 was named as a Faber New Poet. His pamphlet was Number 10 in that series.
Brian Carter (d. 2015) was a Devon-based author, artist and conservation columnist with a deep affection for the landscape and wildlife of his home county. Many of his writings featured his beloved Dartmoor as backdrop, including A Black Fox Running (1981) and Jack: A Novel (1986).
Jo Cartmell is a lifelong naturalist with a special interest in water voles and wildflower meadows. She runs the Twitter accounts @WaterVole and @NearbyWild and also blogs for nearbywild.org.uk about her local wildlife.
Nicola Chester writes about the wildlife she finds wherever she is, mostly roaming the North Wessex Downs, where she lives with her husband and three children. She has written professionally for over a decade. Nicola is particularly passionate about engaging people with nature and how language can communicate the thrill of wild experiences. You can read her blog here: nicolachester. wordpress.com
Horatio Clare is the bestselling author of two memoirs, Running for the Hills and Truant; three books of nature and travel, A Single Swallow, Down to the Sea in Ships, and Orison for a Curlew; a novella, The Prince’s Pen; an anthology, Sicily Through Writers’ Eyes, and most recently a novel for children, Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot, a Sunday Times children’s book of the year.
John Clare (d. 1864) was the son of a farm labourer who went on to produce some of English poetry’s best works on the countryside, rural life and nature. Known as The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet in his time, a sense of alienation and disruption became themes of this work, such as ‘I Am’ (1848).
Ryan Clark is a twenty-two-year-old professional ecologist based in Bucking-hamshire. A lifelong wildlife recorder, he enjoys going for walks in the Chilterns, recording and photographing wildlife. His main passions are plants and pollinators, especially solitary bees. He loves sharing his passion for British wildlife with others and regularly blogs at ryanclarkecology.wordpress.com
William Cobbett (d. 1835) was a farmer, radical politician and perhaps the greatest pamphleteer of his generation. He was the editor of the Political Register, which published every week from 1802 until the year of his death, and forms an invaluable record of the social life of his age as well as its political turmoil. As an author he is best known for his book Rural Rides (1830).
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (d. 1834) was a poet, literary critic and philosopher whose joint publication with William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads (1798), is credited with marking the beginning of the Romantic period in English poetry. A member of the Lake Poets, some of his most famous works include ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ (1798) and ‘Kubla Khan’ (1816).
Tamsin Constable is a writer with an MA in Anthrozoology, specialising in human-wildlife connections and what nature means to people. She was section editor at BBC Wildlife magazine and now works for The Wild Network on how children, wild play and nature shape each other. @ConstableTL
Sue Croxford is a member of the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust and author of the Bug Mad Girl wildlife blog. The blog, which has been awarded BBC Wildlife magazine’s blog of the week, can be found at www.bugmadgirl.blogspot.co.uk. Sue has also written magazine articles that have been published in Best of British, Yours, Chiltern and Lymphoma Matters.
Imtiaz Dharker is a Pakistan-born poet, artist and documentary filmmaker, whose many honours include the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, her work is featured on the UK’s national curriculum, and discusses ideas of geographical and cultural displacement, conflict and gender politics. Her most recent poetry collection is Over the Moon (2014).
Jon Dunn is a natural history writer, photographer and wildlife tour leader based in the Shetland Isles. Author of Britain’s Sea Mammals, his work takes him throughout Europe and the Americas. Once stalked by a mountain lion while birding on the edge of Mexico’s notorious Sierra Madre Occidental, he generally prefers experiencing wildlife on his own terms and not as part of the food chain. www.jondunn.com
George Eliot was the pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans (d. 1880), a Victorian novelist whose Middlemarch (1871–2) was recently voted the greatest British novel of all time by a BBC poll of world critics and academics. Her other major works include Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Silas Marner (1861).
Thomas Furly Forster (d. 1825) was a botanist who compiled many lists and drawings of plants. After his death, his natural history journals were collated and published by his son as The Pocket Encyclopaedia of Natural Phenomena.
Alexi Francis is an artist and illustrator living in Sussex. All her life she has been a lover of wildlife and she studied zoology at university. She is interested in writing, especially about the natural world, and has had several articles published in anthologies and magazines such as Earthlines.
Elizabeth Gardiner (d. 2010) lived in a Wiltshire hamlet for over thirty years. She was a regular contributor to her local village broadsheet, her sparky ‘Notes from Giddeahall’ giving acute and witty insights into her neighbours, both human and animal, wild and domesticated, throughout the changing seasons. She was a prolific writer of short stories, articles and poetry, much of which remains unpublished.
Matt Gaw is a journalist who writes about experiences in nature close to his home in Suffolk. He contributes a monthly wildlife diary to the Suffolk Magazine and edits Suffolk Wildlife Trust’s membership magazine. You can read his blog here: mattgawjournalist.wordpress.com
Sinéad Gleeson’s essays have appeared in Granta, Banshee and Winter Papers. She is the editor of The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers and The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Women Writers from the North of Ireland. She presents The Book Show on RTE Radio 1 and is currently working on a book of essays and a novel.
Caroline Greville is writing a book on her involvement with badgers in the context of her family life and wider rural setting. This memoir forms the main part of her PhD at the University of Kent, alongside research into new nature writing. She is Secretary of the East Kent Badger Group and teaches creative writing.
Thomas Hardy (d. 1928) wrote several famous works, including Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) and Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891). Rural society was a major theme in his books; most were set in the partly imagined region of Wessex, based largely on areas of south and southwest England.
Will Harper-Penrose was brought up an outdoor child in the countryside of Cornwall. He has migrated to South London, as have the parakeets, where he writes about the city’s rich and varied wildlife. In an ever-changing urban environment, he has no shortage of stories to tell about the animals that share his home. Will writes at wildsouthlondon.wordpress.com
Gerard Manley Hopkins (d. 1899) was a poet with a passion for writing descriptions of the natural world, with works including ‘The Windhover’ and ‘The Sea and the Skylark’. He was also a priest and found himself conflicted between his religious belief and his poetry, giving the latter up for seven years at one point. Most of his poetry was not published during his lifetime.
Ted Hughes (d. 1998) was one of the twentieth century’s most revered writers and poets, holding the position of Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death. Born and raised in rural Yorkshire, his work is permeated by a sense of natural wilderness, with animals a central theme. One of his most significant works is considered to be Crow (1970).
Alice Hunter is a wildlife and landscape photographer with a particular interest in European flora and butterflies and a passion for sharing her love of the natural world through her work. She loves being outdoors and writes regularly for several branches of The Wildlife Trusts as well as blogging about her experiences. Visit www.hunterphotos.co.uk to see Alice’s work.
Richard Jefferies (d. 1887) was a nature writer of both essays and novels, inspired by his upbringing on a farm. His works include The Amateur Poacher (1879), Round About a Great Estate (1880), Nature Near London (1883) and The Life of the Fields (1884). The collection Field and Hedgerow was published posthumously in 1889.
Julian Jones’s lifelong interest in eels began with slippery encounters alongside the Severn Estuary in the 1970s and culminated in a career with The Wildlife Trusts, conserving species and habitats, including wetlands that are home to this remarkable species. Julian’s ambition is to help see the return of the burbot (also called eel pout) to Britain’s waterways.
Patrick Kavanagh (d. 1967) is best known for his uncompromising portrayal of Irish country life, presenting a gritty reality that countered traditional pastoral romanticism. His best-known works include the novel Tarry Flynn (1948) based on his experiences as a young farmer, and the poems ‘On Raglan Road’ (1946) and ‘The Great Hunger’ (1942).
Dr Rob Lambert is an academic, broadcaster, birder and expedition ship lecturer, based at the University of Nottingham where he teaches and writes about environmental history, eco-tourism and nature–people relationships over time. He holds a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Western Australia, and is Vice-President of the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust. On 19 June 2015, Rob saw his 500th species of bird in the UK: a Cretzschmar’s bunting on Bardsey Island.
Clare Leighton (d. 1989) was an artist, writer and illustrator famous for her work depicting scenes of rural life. Her best-known works include The Farmer’s Year: A Calendar of English Husbandry (1933) and Four Hedges: A Gardener’s Chronicle (1935).
John Lewis-Stempel’s books include The Wild Life: A Year of Living on Wild Food, the Sunday Times top-ten bestseller The Running Hare: The Secret Life of Farmland, and Meadowland, the winner of the 2015 Thwaites Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing.
Amy Liptrot grew up on a sheep farm in Orkney, Scotland. She’s a writer and her first book, The Outrun, a memoir, was published by Canongate in January 2016 and has been shortlisted for the Wellcome and Wainwright Book Prizes.
Helen Macdonald is a writer, naturalist and Cambridge University scholar who won widespread acclaim for her book H is for Hawk (2014), an account of training a goshawk following her father’s death that was awarded the Samuel Johnson Prize and Costa Book Award, and was a Sunday Times bestseller.
Leanne Manchester works as Communications Officer for The Wildlife Trusts, coordinating the junior branch of the organisation: Wildlife Watch. She engages over 150,000 children and teenagers with nature every year through their quarterly magazine and inspiring projects. Her background in Biology led to volunteering and working for charities like the RSPCA and overseas conservation projects like Global Vision International.
Lucy McRobert is the Nature Matters campaigns manager for The Wildlife Trusts. She has written for publications including BBC Wildlife, is a columnist for Birdwatch magazine and was the Researcher on Tony Juniper’s What Nature Does for Britain (2015). She is the creative director of A Focus On Nature, the youth nature network, and is a keen birdwatcher and mammal-watcher.
Matt Merritt, author of A Sky Full Of Birds, is the editor of Bird Watching Magazine, and a poet whose collections include The Elephant Tests (Nine Arches Press, 2013) and hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica (Nine Arches Press, 2010). He lives in Warwickshire and blogs at polyolbion.blogspot.co.uk
Chris Murphy, son of a Newry poulterer, grew up between Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields, crossing the Irish Sea in 1984 as a ‘reverse migrant’ and fulltime nature conservationist with the RSPB. Now leading environmental campaigns and wildlife tours, he lives with his German wife, Doris, under the beam of St John’s Point lighthouse on the Lecale Coast of County Down.
Benjamin Myers is an award-winning writer. His novels include Turning Blue (2016), Beastings (2014), Pig Iron (2012) and Richard (2010). He lives in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire. www.benmyers.com
Daphne Pleace has had previous lives in teaching, facilitation, and psychotherapy. She recently gained an MA in Creative Writing, and now specialises in nature writing and the links between nature and mental health and wellbeing. When not wandering the landscapes around her Devon home, or visiting wilder parts of Britain, she is working on her first book, and writes for conservation organisations.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (d. 1822) was a lyric and epic poet and progressive thinker of the Romantic era. His often radical views prevented his widespread acclaim until after his death. Today his works, including classics such as ‘Ozymandias’ (1818), are some of the best loved of the period, and have influenced figures from Oscar Wilde to Mahatma Gandhi.
Nan Shepherd (d. 1981) was a poet, novelist and English lecturer, whose work was fundamental in the advancement of early Scottish modernism. The local topography and climate, particularly of the Cairngorm Mountains, strongly influenced her poetry and writing, providing the backdrops for all three of her fictional works and for her much-loved non-fiction book The Living Mountain (1977).
Megan Shersby is a naturalist and keen moth-trapper living in Cambridgeshire. She is a committee member of A Focus On Nature, Britain’s youth nature network. Her wildlife blog (mshersby.wordpress.com) came Highly Commended in the BBC Wildlife magazine’s Wildlife Bloggers Award 2015, and she has also written for local Wildlife Trusts, the Moths Count project and the Mammals in a Sustainable Environment project.
Edward Step (d. 1931) was the author of numerous books on nature, both popular and specialist, including Favourite Flowers of the Garden and Greenhouse (1896), The Romance of Wild Flowers (1901), Nature in the Garden (1910) and Nature Rambles: An Introduction to Country-lore (1930).
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (d. 1892) remains one of Britain’s most beloved poets. Known for his lyrical and metrical mastery, his famous works include ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ (1854) and ‘Crossing the Bar’ (1889). He was the longest-serving Poet Laureate in history, and the first writer to be given peerage for his work, receiving a baronetcy from Queen Victoria.
Dylan Thomas (d. 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer. Although most famous for his poetry, including ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’, his ‘play for voices’ Under Milk Wood is among his best-known works, having been adapted both for the stage and film.
Edward Thomas’ (d. 1917) works were often noted for his portrayals of the English countryside, including In Pursuit of Spring (1914), The Heart of England (1906) and The South Country (1909).
Julia Wallis, now semi-retired, takes great pleasure in creative writing. Although poetry calls loudest, she is also drawn to nature writing and has her first novel under way. Living on the edge of the countryside and helping out on a Midlands smallholding, she is never short of inspiration. Writing jostles for time alongside beekeeping, spinning and a plethora of country crafts.
Reverend Gilbert White (d. 1793) was a curate, as well as a keen naturalist and ornithologist. His best known work is The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789); his journals were published posthumously, in 1931. He is considered by many to have been a major influence in forming modern attitudes to and respect for nature.
Janet Willoner lives in North Yorkshire and has been passionate about nature since childhood. She studied and taught Natural Sciences, had a career as a landscape watercolourist and took up writing on retirement. She has always loved spending time in wild places, experiencing solitude and observing wildlife, all of which inspire her art and writing.
Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club was founded in 1851 as a society dedicated to the study of Herefordshire’s natural history, geology and archaeology. Prestigious members have included Edward Elgar, Roderick Murchison and the botanist George Bentham. Early members’ interest in fungi led to the formation of the British Mycological Society.
Annie Worsley is a mother of four and grandmother living on a coastal croft in the remote Northwest Highlands of Scotland. A former academic who explored the relationships between humans and environments in diverse parts of the world, including Papua New Guinea, she now writes about nature, wildlife and landscape. She tries to paint the wild using words.
William Butler Yeats (d. 1939) was a leading figure of British and Irish twentieth-century literary society, and one of the greatest poets of his time. The Tower (1928) is often considered his best poetic offering, with recurring themes including Irish nationalism, folklore, mysticism and the occult. He was the first Irishman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Seasons books aim to capture the changing year through evocative pieces of writing about nature, describing the life-cycles of flora and fauna, startling moments of transition, seasonal change in cities and gardens, and wildlife experiences that epitomise a point in the year or the shifting patterns of country life.
Each book includes a collection of writing, old and new – extracts from classic texts, lesser-known historical material, new works from established nature writers and some pieces by Wildlife Trusts supporters throughout the UK – threaded together to mirror the unfolding of the seasons.
Spring – February 2016
978-1-78396-223-5
Summer – May 2016
978-1-78396-244-0
Winter – October 2016
978-1-78396-252-5