Summer
Page 17
Olivia Laing is the widely acclaimed author of To the River (2011), shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and the Dolman Travel Book of the Year; The Trip to Echo Pond (2013), about writers and alcoholism, which was shortlisted for the Costa Prize; and The Lonely City (2016).
R. F. Langley (d. 2011) spent much of his adult life as a secondary school teacher and published most of his poetry in the final decade or so of his life, being nominated for a Whitbread Award for his Collected Poems (2000). His poetry was largely inspired by the Suffolk countryside where he spent his final years. In 2011 he won the Forward Prize for best single poem, for ‘To a Nightingale’.
Philip Larkin (d. 1985) was a poet and novelist, best known for his poetry collections including The Less Deceived (1955), The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974). He was the recipient of many honours, including the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1965.
Laurie Lee MBE (d. 1997) wrote a trilogy which taken together is one of the most famous autobiographies in British literature: Cider With Rosie (1959), As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and A Moment of War (1991). He died in his childhood village of Slad, Gloucestershire, which he had written about so famously in Cider With Rosie.
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).
Georgia Locock is a seventeen-year-old naturalist and blogger who lives in Staffordshire. She enjoys nothing more than spending time exploring her patch then sharing her experiences through blogging in the hope of inspiring others. She is also a keen urban wildlife watcher, mammal watcher, and spends time encouraging those her own age and younger to love their natural surroundings.
Norman MacCaig OBE (d. 1996) was a prolific poet who divided his time between the West Highlands and Edinburgh, and whose poetry was acclaimed for its clarity and humour. He was uninterested in fashionable literary movements and undue reverence to the creative process, but was much admired by his peers.
Michael McCarthy has won a string of awards for his writing on the environment, first as Environment Correspondent of The Times and then as Environment Editor of the Independent. He is the author of Say Goodbye To The Cuckoo (2009), a study of Britain’s declining summer migrant birds, and of The Moth Snowstorm – Nature and Joy (2015), both of which were widely praised.
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.
William Morris (d. 1896) was a poet, novelist and translator but is best known as textile designer and key figure in the Victorian ‘Arts and Crafts’ movement. The textiles manufacturing company he founded with his friends Gabriel Dante Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and others, proved hugely influential over Victorian interior design in the UK and America. He was also an early pioneer of socialism.
Emma Oldham has grown up with a notepad in one hand and some type of wildlife in the other. Spending many years in the field and graduating as a conservation biologist, Emma has blogged and documented her surroundings from a very early age. She is particularly motivated in engaging younger audiences, helping them make sure that nature doesn’t drop off their agenda.
Alice Oswald is an English poet who was educated at New College, Oxford and now lives in Devon. She has published six collections of poetry and been the recipient of many awards, including the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2002 for her collection Dart, a work which looks at the River Dart in Devon through multiple perspectives.
Alexandra Pearce originally studied Marine Science before working as a zookeeper. A love of nature and a desire to tackle animal-related issues at the root of the problem led her to writing voluntarily for The Wildlife Trusts. Through this, Alex fell in love with educating people via the written word and now writes for a variety of charities, websites and magazines.
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).
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). Also known for his war poetry, he was killed during the First World War.
John Tyler has worked in nature conservation for many years, most recently as the Warden of the Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve in Kent. He has a particular fondness for glow-worms and coracles. www.johntyler.co.uk
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.
Mary Webb (d. 1927) wrote romantic fiction largely set in her native Shropshire. Soon after her death aged forty-six, an endorsement from British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin caused a surge in the popularity of her works, which prompted Stella Gibbons to satirise them in Cold Comfort Farm (1932). Her novel Gone to Earth was made into a film by Powell and Pressburger in 1950.
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), which has never been out of print; 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.
Matt Adam Williams is a conservationist, photographer and writer. He’s Associate Director of A Focus on Nature, the youth nature network, and he works on climate policy for RSPB. He previously helped set up the UK Youth Climate Coalition and also spent a year working in the jungles of Borneo. He studied English and French at Oxford University. Follow him @mattadamw.
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.
Esther Woolfson, author of Corvus: A Life With Birds and Field Notes from A Hidden City, was Artist in Residence at Aberdeen Centre for Environmental Sustainability and Writer in Residence at Hexham Book Festival. An Honorary Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Aberdeen University, she is working on a new book about human attitudes towards the natural world.
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.
Alan Wright is Senior Campaigns and Communications Officer for the Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside. He writes a weekly wildlife column in the Manchester Evening News, its associated weekly papers and Lancashire magazine. Alan has been at the Wildlife Trust for five years after thirty
years in journalism. He lives on the edge of the West Pennine Moors.
Benjamin Zephaniah is a poet, writer, lyricist and musician, born and raised in the West Midlands. Famously writing and performing in a style that became known as Dub Poetry, his work has been influenced by Jamaican culture and what he calls ‘street politics’. He has written numerous books for both children and adults, and has worked with organisations campaigning for human rights and animal rights. He has sixteen honorary doctorates.
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, 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
Autumn – August 2016
978-1-78396-248-8
Winter – November 2016
978-1-78396-252-5
First published 2016
by Elliott and Thompson Limited
27 John Street, London WC1N 2BX
www.eandtbooks.com
epub: 978-1-78396-245-7
MOBI: 978-1-78396-246-4
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 5: Translation © The British Library Board, Harley MS 978, f.11v; Page 15: From Reverend Gilbert White’s Journals, ed. Walter Johnson (London: George Routledge, 1931); Page 65: Extract from To The River, copyright © Olivia Laing, 2011. First published by Canongate Books Ltd in 2011; Page 71: From Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee, published by The Hogarth Press. Reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd; Page 93: From Reverend Gilbert White’s Journals, ed. Walter Johnson (London: George Routledge, 1931); Page 97: ‘Yellow Iris’ taken from Weeds and Wild Flowers © Alice Oswald and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd; Page 99: A version of this piece first published in the Eastern Daily Press and East Anglian Daily Times, 2015. © Kate Blincoe; Page 101: Extract from In the Country by Kenneth Allsop reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of the Estate of Kenneth Allsop; p. 114: A version of this piece first published on fromshanklin.wordpress.com, 2016. © Jan Freedman; Page 120: From Clare Leighton’s The Farmer’s Year, courtesy of the author’s estate; Page 127: From Claxton by Mark Cocker, published by Jonathan Cape. Reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd; Page 129: From The Little Book of Vegan Poems (AK Press, California). Copyright © Benjamin Zephaniah 2001; Page 139: ‘Here’ taken from The Whitsun Weddings © Philip Larkin and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd; Page 144: From Field Notes From The Edge by Paul Evans, published by Rider Books. Reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd; Page 149: From Wings Over the Valley: A Bird Watcher’s Wales Diary. Copyright John Green by kind permission of Artery Publications; Page 161: From Reverend Gilbert White’s Journals, ed. Walter Johnson (London: George Routledge, 1931); Page 179: From The Needwood Poems. First published on julianbeachwriting.wordpress.com, 2016. © Julian Beach; Page 186: Copyright © Richard Adams, 1975; Page 192: ‘A Voice of Summer’ by Norman MacCaig from The Poems of Norman MacCaig is reproduced by permission of Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd; Page 193: ‘Ninety in the Shade’ is taken from Out of the Valley: Another Year at Wormingford © Ronald Blythe, 2007. Published by Canterbury Press. Used by permission; Page 195: ‘In an August Garden’, Alison Brackenbury, Then published by Carcanet Press; Page 196: Extract from Journals by R. F. Langley (Shearsman Books, Exeter, 2006), copyright © R. F. Langley, 2006. Reprinted by permission of The Estate of R. F. Langley.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Commissioning editor: Jennie Condell
Series research: Brónagh Woods
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover illustrations by Lynn Hatzius