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Rosamund Young Recommends the Best Books About the Countryside

Posted on 3rd November 2017 by Martha Greengrass

A encouragement to stand and stare, our Non-Fiction Book of the Month for November, The Secret Life of Cows, considers the world with a cow’s eye view. Its author, Rosamund Young understands better than most the need to protect and preserve our valuable natural environment. Here, in an exclusive article for Waterstones, she recommends some favourite countryside reads for your Christmas list this year.

Land and scenery of a rural area, land that is away from towns and cities: just two of many definitions of countryside. And in my own little world, the place where I have been lucky enough to live my life: surrounded by cows, endless oceans of grasses and flowers, intricate and ancient hedges and the birds that lodge in them, inviting horizons and nature’s bounty.

I loved hockey, athletics, tennis, dancing, but the dark skies at home and the absolute friendship of the fields was and is a magnet of unequalled strength. My book of observations of bovine behaviour I hope, demonstrates the incontestable necessity of treating all animals with kindness, and respect for their individuality, but I cannot claim to have had that aim in mind before starting to write: it had not occurred to me that everyone didn’t already know.

Selected Poetry of John Clare

John Clare, Professor Jonathan Bate

£14.99

Paperback

5+ in stock

Usually dispatched within 48 hours

John Clare was the great Romantic 'peasant poet' - the chronicler of nature and childhood, the champion of folkways in the face of enclosure and oppression, the love poet, the political satirist and solitary visionary, confined in his maturity to lunatic asylums.

In recommending books on the countryside I can never stray far from John Clare who Roger Deakin quotes in Wildwood, A Journey Through Trees (Hamish Hamilton 2007) : ‘ I found my poems in the fields and only wrote down what I saw’. This straightforward sentence of Clare is for me, what links all the writers on the countryside with whom I feel an affinity. Wildwood is in its own way a kind of poem: Deakin’s moving interpretation of the magic of trees.

Wildwood

Roger Deakin

£10.99

Paperback

10+ in stock

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From the walnut tree at his Suffolk home, the author embarks upon a quest that takes him through Britain, across Europe, to Central Asia and Australia, in search of what lies behind man's profound and enduring connection with wood and with trees. He tells about the element wood, as it exists in nature, in our souls, in our culture and our lives.

Instinct, the twin of observation in writing about the countryside is vitally present in Patrick Barkham’s newly published Islander, which captures the mood of the indescribable uniqueness of the lives of inhabitants of small islands. The particular way the restrictions of size and accessibility act on those who belong, cannot be recreated by a casual visitor, and yet Barkham’s immersed empathy gives the reader a passkey to a glorious experience: sharing the views as if we had undertaken the pilgrimage with him.

Islander

Patrick Barkham

£20.00

Hardback

Out of stock

An enticing exploration of the smallest islands of Britain from the award-winning, bestselling author of The Butterfly Isles. In this evocative and vividly observed book, Patrick Barkham explores some of the most beautiful landscapes in the British Isles as he travels to ever-smaller islands in search of their special magic.

Up with the Lark by Joan Bomford is biography: page after riveting page of plain truth, which is evocative and addictive. It supplies a privileged narrative of the everyday life of a farmer’s daughter but it is far more than that: it is a happy read and a valuable historical record of an admirable way of life.

Up With The Lark

Joan Bomford

£9.99

Paperback

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The nostalgic and evocative memoirs of Joan Bomford, winner of the 2015 Countryfile Farming Hero Award, who has worked on the family farm for more than eight decades.

One could easily argue that in order to write about the British countryside one needs appropriate language: Uncommon Ground by Dominick Tyler provides just that: a significant and soaring contribution to ‘a database of landscape language’. It is a beautiful, tactile volume of (almost) forgotten words describing landscape features, all of which should be remembered, or learnt anew.

Uncommon Ground

Dominick Tyler

£16.99

Paperback

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An enchanting visual glossary of the British landscape: photographs and stories which take the reader from the waterlogged fens to the white sands of the Western Isles. 'Out .

Yesterday I was handed a copy of https://www.waterstones.com/book/do-grow/alice-holden/9781907974021 by Alice Holden, which, one might think does not quite fit the theme here. Not so. My own conviction that the way all food is grown is intricately and indivisibly connected to and is indeed the driving force of health is echoed throughout. The power of this book lies in its author’s appreciation and understanding of the importance of organic farming and growing and in her courage in taking and sharing that knowledge in towns. Many volumes have been written about growing but this one has the virtue of accessibility, optimism and practicality.

Do Grow

Alice Holden

£9.99

Paperback

10+ in stock

Usually dispatched within 48 hours

Ever wanted to grow your own edible garden but don't have the time, the space, or even know where to start? This book helps you find out: the basic tools that you need to get started; how to make a raised bed and why you need one; a recipe for compost; and how to keep pests at bay.

I have read The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks more than twice. It informs, entertains and surprises, illustrating the passion of no-matter-how-hard-a-shepherd’s-life with words that carve their meaning in printed granite.

The Shepherd's Life

James Rebanks

£10.99

Paperback

10+ in stock

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At once lyrical and political, gentle and angry, Rebanks' rural memoir is a rounded account of shepherding in the twenty-first century and a frank and engrossing dissection of a vanishing way of life.

And now, quite late, I have discovered John Lewis- Stempel and The Running Hare: a glittering prize at the end of a hard day on the farm and so many more of his books to look forward to. This one has the suspense of a thriller and the delicate keenness of true affinity with his subject. Mmmm…

The Running Hare

John Lewis-Stempel

£9.99

Paperback

10+ in stock

Usually dispatched within 48 hours

Traditional ploughland is disappearing. The corncrake is all but extinct in England. And the hare is running for its life. The Running Hare tells the story of the wild animals and plants that live in and under our ploughland, from microbes to the patrolling kestrel above the corn, from the linnet to seven-spot ladybirds that eat aphids that eat the crop.