Autumn Read online

  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.

  ALSO AVAILABLE IN THIS SERIES

  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 – Februar
y 2016

  978-1-78396-223-5

  Summer – May 2016

  978-1-78396-244-0

  Winter – October 2016

  978-1-78396-252-5

  First published 2016 by

  Elliott and Thompson Limited

  27 John Street, London WC1N 2BX

  www.eandtbooks.com

  epub: 978-1-78396-249-5

  MOBI: 978-1-78396-250-1

  This collection © Elliott & Thompson 2016

  Introduction © Melissa Harrison 2016

  Copyright in the contributions © the Contributors 2016

  The Authors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this Work.

  Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders for material used within this book. Where this has not been possible, the publisher will be happy to credit them in future editions.

  Page 9: Adapted from material first published in the Biddestone Broadsheet. © Elizabeth Gardiner; Page 12: From Reverend Gilbert White’s Journals, ed. Walter Johnson (London: George Routledge, 1931); Page 28: A version of this piece first published in the Eastern Daily Press and East Anglian Daily Times, 2015. © Kate Blincoe; Page 30: ‘Threshing Morning’ by Patrick Kavanagh is reprinted from Collected Poems, edited by Antoinette Quinn (Allen Lane, 2004), by kind permission of the Trustees of the Estate of the late Katherine B. Kavanagh, through the Jonathan Williams Literary Agency; Page 34: From Reverend Gilbert White’s Journals, ed. Walter Johnson (London: George Routledge, 1931); Page 63: From Clare Leighton’s The Farmer’s Year, courtesy of the author’s estate; Page 75: A version of this piece first published in Eastern Daily Press’ Norfolk, 2014. © Norfolk Wildlife Trust; Page 81: From Reverend Gilbert White’s Journals, ed. Walter Johnson (London: George Routledge, 1931); Page 97: From Yesterday’s Harvest, © Brian Carter. Reproduced by kind permission of the Author’s Estate; Page 116: From H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald, published by Jonathan Cape. Reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.; Page 119: ‘Evidence’ by Matt Merritt first published in Birdbook: Towns, Parks, Gardens & Woodland, edited by Kirsten Irving and Jon Stone (Sidekick Books, 2010); Page 134: From The Living Mountain, copyright © Nan Shepherd, 2008, published by Canongate Books Ltd (originally published in Great Britain in 1977 by Aberdeen University Press); Page 142: From Silver Ley, by permission of the literary executors of Adrian Bell; Page 148: ‘Poem in October’ © The Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas, published in The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas (Weidenfeld & Nicolson); Page 154: From Reverend Gilbert White’s Journals, ed. Walter Johnson (London: George Routledge, 1931); Page 162: ‘Lapwings’, Alison Brackenbury, from Then published by Carcanet Press; Page 164: Extract from The Gallows Pole © Benjamin Myers, published by Bluemoose; Page 166: ‘The Stag’ taken from Collected Poems © Ted Hughes and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.; Page 182: Imtiaz Dharker, Over the Moon (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), www.bloodaxebooks.com; Page 183: From Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills by Neil Ansell (Penguin Books, 2011). Copyright © Neil Ansell 2011; Page 187: ‘Warming’ by David Gwylim Anthony from Passing through the Woods (Matador, 2012).