The Nature of Autumn

Jim Crumley

Jim Crumley is the author of more than forty books, mostly on the wildlife and wild landscape of his native Scotland, many of them making the case for species reintroductions, or ‘rewilding’. His Seasons series, a quartet of books exploring the wildlife and landscapes and how climate change is affecting our environment across the four seasons, is highly acclaimed.  The Nature of Autumn was longlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize 2017 and shortlisted for the Richard Jefferies Society and White Horse Bookshop Literary Prize 2017. The third in the series, The Nature of Spring, was Radio 4’s Book of the Week. The Nature of Summer, was shortlisted for the 2021 Highland Book Prize.  The Eagle’s Way was shortlisted for a prestigious Saltire Society award, and his Encounters in the Wild series – which sees Jim get up close and personal with Britain’s favourite animals – has found him many new readers. He has written about the return of the beaver to the UK’s wetlands in Nature’s Architect, and his most recent title is Lakeland Wild, his first to focus entirely on an English landscape. Lakeland Wild was longlisted for the 2022 Lakeland Book of the Year prize. Jim is also a poet, an occasional broadcaster on both radio and television and a widely published journalist who wrote columns for the Dundee Courier for many years and has a monthly column in The Scots Magazine.

The Seasons quartet is now available in one handsome hardback edition, Seasons of Storm and Wonder.

The Nature of Autumn

by Jim Crumley

  • RRP: £8.99 (print) / £7.99 (ebook)
  • Format: Paperback
  • ISBN: 9781912235162
  • Ebook ISBN: 9781910192474

BUY THE EBOOK DIRECT

BUYING OPTIONS

Buy The Nature of Autumn

Longlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize 2017

In autumn nature stages some of its most enchantingly beautiful displays; yet it’s also a period for reflection, melancholy even, as the days shorten and winter’s chill approaches.

Taking in September to November, Jim Crumley tells the story of how unfolding autumn affects the wildlife of his beloved land – from the windswept Western Isles and the unforgiving Cairngorm plateau to the gentler, graceful landscapes of Loch Lomond and Stirling. Along the way, Jim experiences the deer rut, finds phenomenal redwood trees in the most unexpected of places, and contemplates climate change, the death of his father, and his own love of nature; thus painting an intimate – and deeply personal – portrait of a moody and majestic British autumn.

Prizes and awards

SHORTLISTED, The Richard Jefferies Society and White Horse Bookshop Literary Prize 2017
LONGLISTED, Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize 2017

REVIEWS OF The Nature of Autumn

"A delightful meditation." The Guardian

"A cornucopia of autumnal delight." The Scots Magazine

"A love song to 'earth’s reviver and replenisher'." Dundee Courier

"Breathtaking…this magical pilgrimage visits enchanting and hidden places…with characteristic moments of close observation, immersion and poetry Crumley witnesses the melancholic textures and haunting transformations of this most beautiful season. This nature book is a delight." Miriam Darlington, BBC Wildlife

"Crumley always manages to combine an extraordinary depth of…knowledge with vivid warm writing and a clear love of what he is writing about.…çrumley is one of an endangered species – the real naturalists. Enchanting." Sara Maitland, BBC Countryfile

"Nature writing [with] a higher tensile strength than most." The Herald