BOOKS: Nature

Peat and Whisky: The Unbreakable Bond is, as one of the best-known aficionados attests, “among the most important books about whisky ever written.” Part travelogue, part popular science, and a love letter to Scotland’s most famous artisan product, Mike Billett’s account brings together landscapes, geology, ecology, history, people and their whisky, whilst also addressing an important current environmental issue: peatlands and their role in climate change.

For Linda Cracknell, exposure to wind, rock, mist, and salt water is integral to her writing process. In this wonderful essay collection, she explores her inspirations, in nature and from other artists and their work, and she offers thoughtful writing prompts.

Singing Like Larks opens a rare window onto the ancient song traditions of the British Isles, interweaving mesmerising lyrics, folklore and colourful nature writing to uncover the remarkable relationship between birds and traditional folk music. Birds are beloved for their song and have featured in our own music for centuries. This charming volume takes us on a journey of discovery to explore why birds appear in so many folk songs. An important repository and treasury of bird-related folk songs, Singing Like Larks is also an account of one young nature writer’s journey into the world of folk music, and a joyous celebration of song, the seasons, and our love of birds.

The Nature Chronicles Prize is a new biennial, international, English-language literary award founded to celebrate engaging, unique, essay-length non-fiction that “responds to the time we are in and the world as it is”. Conceived in 2020 to mark the global pandemic, the prize is also a memorial to Prudence Scott, a lifelong nature diarist who died in 2019. The prize was announced at the Kendal Mountain Festival on November 17, 2022. Contained within this volume are the outstanding winning entries for the inaugural prize, by Jenny Chamarette, Laura Coleman, Ben Crane, Joanna Pocock and Neha Sinha, alongside the inaugural overall winner: Nicola Pitchford, for her essay ‘A Parable of Arable Land’. These winning works express diverse responses to our planet and its life, and together embody the best of contemporary nature writing, whether by emerging or established authors.

Shortlisted for the Lakeland Book of the Year Award 2023 | This essential volume reminds us how and why Northern people have risen to the challenge of defending their open spaces, demanding action on pollution and habitat loss. Contemporary writers including Sarah Hall, Lee Schofield, Benjamin Myers and Lemn Sissay take their place alongside those who wrote in previous centuries. Together, the voices in this one-of-a-kind anthology testify that North Country is a place apart.

Longlisted for the Highland Book Prize 2022 | After a lifetime immersed in Scotland’s landscapes and enriched by occasional forays in other northern lands, Jim has amassed knowledge, insight and a bank of memorable imagery chronicling the wonder, tumult and spectacle of nature’s seasonal transformations. He has witnessed not only nature’s unparalleled beauty, but also how climate chaos and humankind has brought unwanted drama to wildlife and widespread destruction of ecosystems and habitats. In this landmark volume, Jim combines lyrical prose and passionate eloquence to lay bare the impact of global warming and urge us all towards a more daring conservation vision that embraces everything from the mountain treeline to a second spring for the wolf.

As spring arrives, Stephen Moss’s Somerset garden is awash with birdsong: chiffchaffs, wrens, robins and more. Overhead, buzzards soar, ravens tumble and the season gathers pace. This evocative account underlines how a global crisis changed the way we relate to the natural world, giving us hope for the future. And it puts down a marker for a new normal: when, during that brief but unforgettable spring, nature gave us comfort, hope and joy.

Through unparalleled expertise as a field naturalist, Roy Dennis is able to write about the natural world in a way that considers both the problems and the progress in ecology and conservation. Beginning with cottongrass, whose snow-white blooms blow gently in the wind across the wetter moors and bogs, this is a year-round trove of insight and knowledge for anyone who cares about the natural world – from birdsong and biodiversity to sphagnum and species reintroduction.