Symphonic

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.

Symphonic

Harmony in Nature and Why It Matters

by Jim Crumley

  • RRP: £14.99 (print)
  • Format: Hardback
  • ISBN: 9781916812536
  • Publication date: February 12, 2026

BUYING OPTIONS

Buy Symphonic

A lyrical and personal account of Jim Crumley’s lifelong quest to find harmony in nature as he celebrates our precious planet.

Renowned nature writer Jim Crumley draws on more than six decades of immersion in wild landscapes to explore the profound harmony at the heart of the natural world—and why it matters now more than ever.

With the lyrical clarity and passionate advocacy that have made him Scotland’s foremost nature commentator, Crumley weaves together close observation, personal encounters, and ecological insight to reveal nature as a vast, interconnected symphony. He argues that our survival depends on relearning how to listen to the land, to recognise our place within the great orchestration of life rather than apart from it. Through evocative prose built on his expertise and care, Crumley urges us to defend the beauty and balance of the living world, offering both a celebration and a clarion call.

Symphonic is a vital testament from a writer whose life’s work is a passionate defence and celebration of nature’s enduring—and endangered—harmony.