Nature Writing (2) - British Version

The Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize

Having just posted for you a list of nature books that won an American award, here are some that have won the Wainwright Prize for "...the best writing on the general outdoors, nature and UK-based travel writing."

     The award is named for Alfred Wainwright (1907-1991) who produced Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells. To learn more about him see the website for The Wainwright Society.

     The prize for the best UK Nature & Travel Writing is sponsored by Wainwright Golden Beer and the National Trust. For additional information and a list of the award winners see Wainwright Prize.

For your convenience, information about the past five winners is provided below:

The 2018 Winner

The Seabird’s Cry by Adam Nicolson, William Collins, 2017

"The Seabird’s Cry is a celebration of the wonders of seabirds, the only creatures at home in the air, on land and on the sea, but it also carries a stark warning about the rapid decline in seabird numbers. With numbers dropping by two thirds since the 1950s, Adam Nicolson suggests that the extinction of some species of seabirds within this century could be a very real possibility."

The 2017 Winner

Where Poppies Blow, John Lewis-Stempel, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. "Where Poppies Blow is the unique story of the British soldiers of the Great War and their relationship with the animals and plants around them. This connection was of profound importance, because it goes a long way to explaining why they fought, and how they found the will to go on. At the most basic level, animals and birds provided interest to fill the blank hours in the trenches and billets – bird-watching, for instance, was probably the single most popular hobby among officers. But perhaps more importantly, the ability of nature to endure, despite the bullets and blood, gave men a psychological, spiritual, even religious uplift."

The 2016 Winner

The Outrun, Amy Liptrot, Canongate Books

"After a decade of heavy partying and hard drinking in London, Amy Liptrot returns home to Orkney, a remote island off the north of Scotland. The Outrun maps Amy’s inspiring recovery as she walks along windy coasts, swims in icy Atlantic waters, tracks Orkney’s wildlife, and reconnects with her parents, revisiting and rediscovering the place that shaped her."

The 2015 Winner

Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field, John Lewis-Stempel, Doubleday

"In Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field, John Lewis-Stempel charts a year in the life of a field on his farm on the Herefordshire border. If you're thinking that sounds like it could be a claustrophobic or dull experience, put such ideas out of your mind immediately. Books have been written about entire countries that contain a less interesting cast of characters than Lewis-Stempel's account of one field on the edge of Wales. Foxes, red kites and voles become as intricately shaded as characters in an HBO drama, the readers' sympathies swinging between them and their adversaries. Not every English meadow contains such a vast variety of wildlife as Lewis-Stempel's, and he's lucky to live somewhere so unspoilt, but his immense, patient powers of observation – along with a flair for the anthropomorphic – mean he is able to offer a portrait of animal life that's rare in its colour and drama."

The 2014 Winner

     

The Green Road Into The Trees: A Walk through England, Hugh Thomson "Hugh Thompson said: “After years of travelling in exotic places like Peru, Mexico and the Indian Himalaya, this book gave me the chance to explore perhaps the strangest of them all - my own.”

Still Christmas Shopping?

Here are the ones that were shortlisted for 2018:

The Last Wilderness by Neil Ansell (Tinder Press)

"Neil sets the experience of being in nature alone within the context of a series of walks that he takes into the most remote parts of Britain, the rough bounds in the Scottish Highlands."

Hidden Nature by Alys Fowler (Hodder & Stoughton)

"Alys writes about a journey exploring the one hundred miles of navigable canals around Birmingham where she lives by boat."

Outskirts by John Grindrod (Sceptre)

"The green belt: a mystery of modern life. It doesn’t appear on maps, it is not signposted, and it is hard to know where it lies. It also stirs up fiery emotions. Here John Grindrod tells the story of the creation of these mysterious tracts of land: the people who dreamt up the idea; how and when they came into operation; and what people get up to in them."

The Dun Cow Rib by John Lister-Kaye (Canongate)

"John Lister-Kaye has spent a lifetime exploring, protecting and celebrating the British landscape and its wildlife.  His joyous childhood holidays – spent scrambling through hedges and ditches after birds and small beasts, keeping pigeons in the loft and tracking foxes around the edge of the garden – were the perfect apprenticeship for his two lifelong passions: exploring the wonders of nature, and writing about them.  Warm, wise and full of wonder, The Dun Cow Rib is a captivating coming of age tale by one of the founding fathers of nature writing."

The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris (Hamish Hamilton)

“The Lost Words is a stunning book beautifully written by Robert Macfarlane and illustrated by Jackie Morris that represents a lost lexicon of nature. It seems impossible, laughable, that words like acorn, bluebell, fern, newt, otter and wren have been omitted from certain dictionaries because they are no longer relevant to modern-day childhood, but it is sadly true."

The Salt Path by Raynor Winn (Michael Joseph)

"In one devastating week, Raynor and her husband Moth lost their home of 20 years, just as a terminal diagnosis threatened to take away their future together. With nowhere else to go, they decided to walk the South West Coast Path: a 630-mile sea-swept trail from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and Cornwall. The Salt Path is a piece of nature writing in the form of a memoir."