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 Spring (Paperback)
by Jim Crumley
Read an extract
A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, from the author of the Wainwright Prize-longlisted The Nature of Autumn Spring is nature’s season of rebirth and rejuvenation. Earth’s northern hemisphere tilts towards the sun, winter yields to intensifying light and warmth, and a wild, elemental beauty transforms the Highland landscape and a repertoire of islands from Colonsay to Lindisfarne. Jim Crumley chronicles the wonder, tumult and spectacle of that transformation, but he shows too that it is no Wordsworthian idyll that unfolds. Climate chaos brings unwanted drama to the lives of badger and fox, seal and seabird and raptor, pine marten and sand martin. Jim lays bare the impact of global warming and urges us all towards a more daring conservation vision that embraces everything from the mountain treeline to a second spring for the wolf.
REVIEWS OF The Nature of Spring (Paperback)
“This thought-inducing paean to nature brings the issues of the natural world to the forefront … Crumley writes movingly about the season of rebirth and transformation which sees the hibernators awaken and the daffodils rise. A wonderful read.” Kirstin Tait, Scottish Field
“Beautifully written … thoughtful and thought-provoking … Jim Crumley does not shy away from the important issues facing the natural world [in] a book you’d like to think could have real influence on the world we live in.” Undiscovered Scotland
“Mesmerising.” Susan Swarbrick, Herald
"Delightful … The lyrical prose elevates Crumley’s detailed descriptions of the natural world he encounters … Readers will be transported by this immersive outing." Publishers Weekly
“Enthralling and often strident.” Observer
"He could be Ali Smith’s naturalist twin.” Rosemary Goring, Scottish Review of Book
“A fantastic writer … exquisite observations of details in the landscape as well as sweeping vistas … remarkable.” Ben Hoare, BBC Countryfile
“Nature writer and poet Jim Crumley returns with a third volume of close observations [and] charts the arrival of spring, from the February song of a mistle thrush to May’s drowsy warmth. Crumley quotes Margiad Evans – ‘Write in the very now where you find yourself’ – and takes her advice to heart.” New Statesman
