English Pastoral (Hardback)

'Remarkable ... A brilliant, beautiful book ... Eloquent, persuasive and electric with the urgency that comes out of love' - Christine Patterson, The Sunday Times 

'It is a book full of love: of his grandfather, of his children and of the Lake District valley where he lives and farms ... Some books change our world. I hope this turns out to be one of them.' - Julian Glover, Evening Standard

'A beautifully-written story of a family, a home and a changing landscape.' - Nigel Slater

'James Rebanks's English Pastoral deserves to be called a masterpiece. Four generations of his family building on centuries of their farming in the Cumbrian Fells gives us a poetic, practical, raw and almost miraculously detailed picture of this ancient way of life struggling to survive and to be reborn. This wonderful book was waiting to be written.' - Melvyn Bragg, New Statesman Book of the Year

'One of the most important books of our time. Told with humility and grace, this story of farming over three generations - where we went wrong and how we can change our ways - will be our land's salvation.' - Isabella Tree

'What a terrific book: vivid and impassioned and urgent--and, in both its alarm and its awe for the natural world, deeply convincing. Rebanks leaves no doubt that the question of how to farm is a question of human survival on this hard-used planet. He should be read by everyone who grows food, and by everyone who eats it' -- Philip Gourevitch

'Ambitious, accomplished ... Rebanks is eloquent - scenes of mud and guts are interspersed with quotes ranging from Virgil to Schumpeter, Rachel Carson to Wendell Berry ... English Pastoral builds into a heartfelt elegy for all that has been lost from our landscape, and a rousing disquisition on what could be regained - a rallying cry for a better future.' - Laura Battle, The Financial Times

'Heartfelt, rich with detail ... James Rebanks writes with his heart, and his heart is in the right place. We should listen to him.' - Jamie Blackett, The Telegraph 

'Marvellous and moving' - Richard Flanagan

'It moved me to tears, made me feel excited and optimistic, and said, so eloquently and succinctly, all the things I've been thinking and feeling ... It is not just a beautiful book to read, but so important and so timely. A wonderful, thought-provoking, heartlifting read.' - Kate Humble

'Rapturous ... For Rebanks writing and farming have proved complementary: while working long hours on the land he has produced a book in a pastoral tradition that runs from Virgil to Wendell Berry' - Blake Morrison

'I have never met anyone so roaringly, joyously in context and content as James Rebanks, belting around his farm in the rain ... The story of Rebanks and his family is the story of what farming has been in Britain but, also, the story of what it could become' - Caitlin Moran, The Times 

'Perfectly judged, it made me cry (twice) and left me with a new understanding of agriculture, and a real sense of hope.' - Melissa Harrison

'Wonderful ... I can't imagine anyone starting to read English Pastoral and not being eager to read it all at once, as I did' - Philip Pullman

'A heartfelt book and one that dares to hope.' - Alan Bennett

'The power of English Pastoral lies not just in the passion and eloquence of its prose or the clarity of its argument. It carries the authority of one who has not just thought about these problems, but lived them. It is a timely and important book.' - TLS

'Beautiful and shocking, but ultimately so gloriously hopeful. The book we should all read as we emerge from this latest strangeness.' - Paula Hawkins

'I can't remember a book I've wanted to press into people's hands more this year than this resonant, immensely thoughtful look back at three generations of a farming family ... Managing to cram the whole modern history of British farming and nature into 270 beautifully written pages, this is a gem that's moving and immensely informative.' - Andrew Holgate, The Sunday Times Nature Book of the Year

'A rare and urgent book ... Its beauty is not only in the writing but in what is behind it: a gentle and wise sensibility that is alive to the human love affair with the land and yet also intimately cognisant of our collective and systematic cruelty towards it.' - Hisham Matar

'I think, genuinely, this is the best book I've read this year, and one of the most important books of recent years. It is about food and farming, and how we eat what we eat. It's about progress and nostalgia, without being prideful or mawkish, it's about families and tradition, and the passing of time. It made me simultaneously proud to be British, and sad for what we have become, but hopeful that we can change. -- Adam Rutherford

Through the eyes of James Rebanks as a grandson, son, and then father, we witness the tragic decline of traditional agriculture, and glimpse what we must now do to make it right again. As an evocation of British landscape past and present, it's up there with Cider With Rosie.' - Joanna Blythman

'A beautiful and important book.' - Sadie Jones

'Moving, thought-provoking and beautifully written.' - James Holland

'English Pastoral is one of the most captivating memoirs of recent years ...The traditional pastoral is about retreat into an imagined rural idyll, but this confronts very real environmental dilemmas. Like the best books, it gives you hope and new energy.' - Amanda Craig, The Guardian