S H O RT L I S T E D B O O K S
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Welcome to the Wainwright Prize
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here is nothing I love more than a pile of books to read. This year’s Wainwright longlist was a joy, and further evidence that nature writing is going from strength to strength. Difficult as it was for our judges to choose the shortlist, our final selection is truly inspiring.
We’re going to have a tough time making our final choice, but we won’t regret a moment spent with any of these beautiful books.
Photo: David Levenson
A personal life interwoven with the experience of nature is a recurring theme, and we have veteran journalist Mike McCarthy’s wonderful The Moth Snowstorm recalling a time of natural abundance and bemoaning its loss alongside newcomer Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun, a poignant narrative describing how her recovery from alcoholism was helped by Orkney’s raw landscape and remarkable wildlife. Rob Cowen’s exploration of the wilderness on his doorstep in Common Ground is a counterpoint to his grappling with the prospect of fatherhood and the perhaps inevitable taming of his special place; while the hugely successful A Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks is a deeply moving account of the
relationship between shepherd and landscape, where the human feels as hefted as the sheep. Katherine Norbury’s The Fish Ladder inspires an astonishing depth of response as, among other things, she journeys to the source of rivers to find herself. It is a delight, too, to have Robert Macfarlane’s impressive Landmarks on the shortlist: a book that has already encouraged people the length and breadth of the country to celebrate and protect the local words for places, weather, features and landscape character even as our official dictionary appears ready to let them slide into oblivion.
Dame Fiona Reynolds Chair of Judges
S H O R T L I S T E D
B O O K S
Common Ground
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Rob Cowen
Rob Cowen is an award-winning journalist and writer who has authored regular columns on nature and travel for the Independent, Independent on Sunday and the Telegraph. Rob previously received the Roger Deakin Award from the Society of Authors for his first book Skimming Stones and Other Ways of Being in the Wild (2012).
unique evocation of how, over the course of one year, Rob Cowen discovered a common - though extraordinary - square mile of wood, meadow, hedge and river on the edge of his northern town. After moving from London to Yorkshire, and about to become a father for the first time, Rob Cowen finds himself in unfamiliar territory.Yearning for open space, he ventures out to a nearby edge-land: a pylon-slung tangle of wood, hedge, field, meadow and river. Digging deeper into this lost landscape, he begins to uncover its many layers and lives. In bringing this edge-land to life, Cowen offers both a unique portrait of people and place through time and an unforgettable exploration of the common ground we share with the natural world, the past and each other. PubLIsheD by Pb WINDMILL bOOKs, hb huTChINsON bOOKs
S H O R T L I S T E D
B O O K S
Landmarks
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Photo: Rosamund Macfarlane
Robert Macfarlane
Robert Macfarlane is the author of Mountains of the Mind,The Wild Places,The Old Ways and Landmarks. Mountains of the Mind won the Guardian First Book Award and the Somerset Maugham Award and The Wild Places won the Boardman-Tasker Award. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and writes on environmentalism, literature and travel for publications including the Guardian, Sunday Times and New York Times.
obert Macfarlane's joyous meditation on words, landscape and the relationship between the two. Words are grained into our landscapes, and landscapes are grained into our words. Landmarks is about the power of language to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to the literature of nature, and a glossary containing thousands of remarkable words used in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales to describe land, nature and weather.Travelling from Cumbria to the Cairngorms, and exploring the landscapes of Roger Deakin, J. A. Baker, Nan Shepherd and others, Robert Macfarlane shows that language, well used, is a keen way of knowing landscape, and a vital means of coming to love it. PubLIsheD by PeNguIN
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S H O R T L I S T E D
B O O K S
The Fish Ladder
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Photo: Robin Farquhar-Thomson
Katharine Norbury
Katharine Norbury has worked extensively in film and television drama. She has an MA in Creative Writing from UEA. The Fish Ladder is her first book. She was chosen as the Observer’s Rising Star in non-fiction for 2015 and The Fish Ladder was a book of the year in the Guardian, the Independent and the Telegraph. It has been shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize 2016 and nominated as one of National Reading Group Day 2016’s real life reads.
atharine Norbury was abandoned as a baby in a Liverpool convent. Raised by loving adoptive parents, she grew into a wanderer, drawn by the beauty of the British countryside. One summer, following the miscarriage of a much-longed-for child, Katharine and her nine-year-old daughter Evie decide to follow a river from the sea to its source. But a chance circumstance forces Katharine to the door of the woman who gave her up all those years ago. Combining travelogue, memoir, exquisite nature writing, fragments of poetry and tales from Celtic mythology, The Fish Ladder is a captivating and life-affirming story about motherhood, marriage, family, and self-discovery, illuminated by the extraordinary majesty of the natural world. P u b L I s h e D b y b L O O M s b u Ry
S H O R T L I S T E D
B O O K S
The Moth Snowstorm
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Michael McCarthy
Michael McCarthy is one of Britain's leading writers on the environment. Formerly environment correspondent of The Times, for the last ten years he has been environment editor of the Independent. He has three times been named as Environment Reporter of The Year. In 2007 he was awarded the Medal of the RSPB, for an outstanding contribution to conservation.
ature has many gifts for us, but perhaps the greatest of them all is joy; the intense delight we can take in the natural world, in its beauty, in the wonder it can offer us, in the peace it can provide. In The Moth Snowstorm Michael McCarthy proposes this joy as a defence of a natural world which is ever more threatened, and which, he argues, is inadequately served by the two defences put forward hitherto: sustainable development and the recognition of ecosystem services. The Moth Snowstorm not only presents a new way of looking at the world around us, but effortlessly blends with it a remarkable and moving memoir of childhood trauma from which love of the natural world emerged. It is a powerful and wholly original book which comes at a time when nature has never needed it more. P u b L I s h e D b y J O h N M u R R Ay
S H O R T L I S T E D
B O O K S
The Outrun
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Photo: Lisa swarna Khanna
Amy Liptrot
Amy Liptrot has published her work with various magazines, journals and blogs and she has written a regular column for Caught by the River out of which The Outrun has emerged. As well as writing for major newspapers including the Guardian and the Observer, Amy has worked as an artist's model, a trampolinist and in a shellfish factory. This is her first book.
hen Amy Liptrot returns to Orkney she is drawn back to the Outrun on the sheep farm where she grew up. Approaching the land that was once home, memories of her childhood merge with the recent events that have set her on this journey. As she grew up, she longed to leave this remote life. She moved to London and found herself in a hedonistic cycle. Unable to control her drinking, alcohol gradually took over. Now thirty, she finds herself washed up back home on Orkney, standing unstable at the cliff edge, trying to come to terms with what happened to her. The Outrun is a beautiful, inspiring book about living on the edge, about the pull between island and city, and about the ability of the sea, the land, the wind and the moon to restore life and renew hope. P u b L I s h e D b y C A N O N g AT e
S H O R T L I S T E D
B O O K S
The Shepherd’s Life
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Photo: eamonn McCabe
James Rebanks
James Rebanks is the Herdwick Shepherd, whose account of shepherding has a strong following on Twitter. His family have farmed in the same area for six hundred years.
ome people's lives are entirely their own creations. James Rebanks' isn't.The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd himself, he and his family have lived and worked in and around the Lake District for generations. In evocative and lucid prose, James Rebanks takes us through a shepherd's year, offering a unique account of rural life and a fundamental connection with the land that most of us have lost. It is a story of working lives, the people around him, his childhood, his parents and grandparents, a people who exist and endure even as the world changes around them. Many stories are of people working desperately hard to leave a place.This is the story of someone trying desperately hard to stay. PubLIsheD by PeNguIN
L O N G L I S T E D Being A Beast
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Charles Foster harles Foster wanted to know what it was like to be a beast: a badger, an otter, a deer, a fox, a swift. And through knowing what it was like he wanted to get down and grapple with the beast in us all. An intimate look at the life of animals, neuroscience, psychology, nature writing and memoir, it is a journey of thrills and surprises, containing wonderful moments of humour and joy, but also providing important lessons for all of us who share life on this precious planet.
Landskipping
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Anna Pavord oth history and travel book, Landskipping is a meditation on the nature of the british landscape of matchless brilliance and iridescent beauty that will reshape the way we think about our country. Moving from the rolling hills of Dorset to the peaks of the scottish highlands, this is an exquisite and compelling book, written with zest, passion and deep understanding.
Raptor
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James Macdonald Lockhart f all the birds of the british Isles, the raptor reigns supreme, sparking the imagination like no other. In this magnificent hymn to these beautiful animals, James Macdonald Lockhart explores all fifteen breeding birds of prey on these shores – from the hen harrier swimming over the land in the dregs of a May gale on Orkney, to the ghostly sparrowhawk displaying in the fields around his home in Warwickshire. This is a book that will change how we think of our own skies.
B O O K S Coastlines
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Patrick Barkham rom one of the most engaging and widely admired of the new generation of nature writers comes a portrait of the british coastline. Told through a series of walks beside the sea, this is a story of the most beautiful 742 miles of coastline in england, Wales and Northern Ireland: their rocks, plants and animals, their views, walks and history, and the people who have made their lives within sight of the waves.
Rain
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Melissa Harrison henever rain falls, our countryside changes. Fields, farms, hills and hedgerows appear altered, the wildlife behaves differently, and over time the terrain itself is transformed. In Rain, Melissa harrison explores our relationship with the weather as she follows the course of four rain showers, in four seasons, across Wicken Fen, shropshire, the Darent Valley and Dartmoor.
Weatherland
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Alexandra Harris riters and artists across the centuries have looked up at the same skies and walked through the same brisk air, then threaded their experience of weather into novels, poems and paintings. Weatherland is the very first book to consider english literary and artistic responses to our english weather patterns. Alexandra harris deftly historicises the weather through the experiences and imaginings of the finest creative minds, and sheds fresh literary light on our national obsession.
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Q&A with Julia Bradbury
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he Wainwright Prize is delighted to welcome Julia Bradbury onto the judging panel for 2016.
Do you like to read about a place/destination before you visit? If I’m going to film there, then yes for research purposes and to get the feel of the place. If I’m going on holiday then I will generally
read enough to pique my interest then I’ll leave the rest to exploration.
Do you think a book can transport you to a place? Of course but there’s nothing that wakes the senses like the real thing. Reading about love and being in love are very different.
What is your favourite nature and travel book of all time? We live a lifetime and encounter so many books along the way it’s impossible to pin it down to one. Well, it is for me. I have a beautiful coffee table book by Michael Poliza – photographs of Africa which I never tire of. south Africa is one of my favourite places in the world so I like to be reminded. I know you presented a TV show called Wonders of Britain – what is your number one place to visit/wonder of Britain? I loved flying into barra
airport and landing on the beach, going to the early morning fish market in Looe, zip wiring over the eden Project, and learning to sword fight at Tintagel. We are truly spoilt in this country with amazingly diverse beautiful places and landscapes packed into a small area. To choose just one would be criminal (and impossible). You co-hosted Countryfile for five years – did the popularity of the show take you by surprise? The show’s enormous success then and its continued popularity has been a surprise for everyone. It’s something of a phenomenon in the telly world and I’m very proud to have been a part of it. The team work incredibly hard to make it happen week after week. Could you tell us about one of your favourite moments working on Countryfile? Releasing 20,000 slippery
elvers (glass eels) into Llangorse Lake in Powys with some year 6 students from The grange, Monmouth Prep school as part of a ten year conservation programme. I’m not big into touching eels but to see the excitement on those young faces and to witness them connecting with nature in a very real way was memorable. And laying a hedge with his Royal highness The Prince of Wales at highgrove. he did accidently flick me in the face with a branch but he was very apologetic.
with a television commissioner at the bbC and realising my love of the outdoors and knowledge about Wainwright he ordered four walks to accompany a documentary. In some circles I was regarded as a controversial choice of presenter, but the success was overwhelming and catapulted me in to the outdoor arena – and I am now fondly known as The Walking Man’s Crumpet or the Lady of the Lakes!
We enjoyed your latest series Best Walks With a View. Do you have a favourite walk? How do you select the walks for You also presented a the show? show Wainwright Walks and have a book called Anything in the Peak Wainwright Walks. Has District because it reminds Alfred Wainwright been an me of walking as a little girl influence for you? with my Dad, who would take me out after school (in Wainwright actually influenced my TV career, but sheffield), and the Lakes are spectacular on every visit. it’s my Dad that I have to The walks for the series thank for getting me in to walking as a youngster and depend on the theme of the series and there are for initially introducing me various criteria they have to to him in the first place. fulfil to make good TV Then following a meeting
walks. somebody suggested circular walks. great for families but they wouldn’t work for telly because starting in a car park and ending in a car park wouldn’t be a nice beginning or an end to the story! you need a satisfying conclusion to the end of the programme, whether that’s the view, a good story or a pub! The Outdoor Guide is a new, online resource with an abundance of inspiring walks to download, places to stay, eat and drink and some great outdoor gear to discover... all in one place. There are lots of ideas and personal recommendations from TV presenter and outdoor enthusiast Julia Bradbury.
theoutdoorguide.co.uk
Photo: David Levenson
JUDGES FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2016 Dame Fiona Reynolds
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ame Fiona Reynolds Dbe became Master of emmanuel College, Cambridge in 2012. she came to the college from the National Trust, of which she was Director-general from 2001-2012. before becoming Dg of the Trust, she was Director of the Women’s unit in the Cabinet Office (1998-2000), Director of the Council for the Protection of Rural england and secretary to the Council for National Parks. Fiona is the senior Non-executive Director on the executive board of the bbC, a Non-executive Director of Wessex Water and became chair of green Alliance in December 2014. Fiona was appointed Cbe for services to the environment and conservation in 1998 and Dbe in 2008.
Fergus Collins
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Bill Lyons
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xecutive editor of Countryfile and Secret Britain on bbC One and also responsible for Coast on bbC Two, he's made programmes for both ITV and Channel Four as well as the bbC, specialising in current affairs, history and archaeology. An eMMy nominee and three times finalist at the New york Film Festival he's also a winner of the british Archaeological Awards with Blood Red Roses, while his ITV factual drama, Titanic - Birth of a Legend won an RTs for best Visual effects. his bedtime reading is Alfred Wainwright's Guide to the Western Fells.
Julia Bradbury
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ditor of BBC Countryfile redited with revamping Magazine, writer and a sunday night prime time keen amateur naturalist, he television and dubbed “Lady of spends most of his spare the Lakes”, Julia bradbury is one time wandering the hills and of the small screen’s most byways around his popular and versatile Monmouthshire home – and reads vast tracts presenters. she has just completed filming a new of nature writing to survive his daily commute. eight part walking series in the uK, Best Walks With a View with Julia bradbury which has recently been shown on ITV, accompanied by a book, DVD and online resource The Outdoor Guide.
Sally Palmer
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Photo: National Trust Images/Arnhel de serra
utdoors and nature enthusiast sally is editor of the National Trust Magazine – the highest circulation magazine in the uK. she is an avid reader, so whittling down this longlist has been an absolute joy. brought up in rural Devon surrounded by ponies, sheep and goats, she particularly enjoys coastal walking in the rain and muddy trail running. her favourite landscape is Dartmoor.
Dan Lewis
an studied english and Linguistics at Durham, so D naturally ended up a
bookseller. starting as a Christmas temp for Waterstones, over six years he was part of its retail design, national marketing and online teams, ultimately running their blog, podcast and social media as Literary Content editor. Dan joined stanfords in 2014 where amongst other things he has worked on stanfords Travel Writing Festival and developed and coordinated the inaugural edward stanford Travel Writing Awards.
TOG is a new, online resourc ce with an abundance of inspiring walks to down nload, places to stay, eat t and d drink d i k and d some great g t outdoor td gear to discover.... all in n one place.
There are lots of ideas s and personal
recommendations from T TV Presenter and
outdoor enthusiast Julia Br radbury,, who will be a judge in this year’s competition.
Julia says ...
“I am delighted to be part of this t year’sWainwright Prize and to share with you a winner that AW would be proud of. of.””
www.theoutdoorguide.co.uk
Š Derry Brabbs
The Wainwright Society was formed in 2002 and now has over 2000 family members. The Society promotes Alfred Wainwright’s vision of introducing a wider audience to fellwalking and caring for the hills. We are pleased to announce the publication of Encounters with Wainwright. This book, compiled and edited by David Johnson, Editor of Footsteps, the magazine of The Wainwright Society, is 240 pages long, in full colour and with over 250 photographs. It contains 120 stories of people who met or knew Alfred Wainwright. These range from very brief encounters to accounts from those who knew him over many years. Together they provide much new information and provide the reader with an opportunity to consider Wainwright afresh in the light of first-hand experience.
Encounters wit h Wainwright
compiled and edit ed by
David Johnson
All profits from this book will go to Animal Rescue Cumbria. Available from: www.wainwright.org.uk/ encounters-with-wainwright www.wainwright.org.uk
WAINWRIGHT’S WALKING GUIDE TO
THE FAR EASTERN FELLS
THE LAKE DISTRICT FELLS BOOK 2:
READER’S EDITION
THE FAR EASTERN FELLS REVISED BY CLIVE HUTCHBY
BY ALFRED WAINWRIGHT
This new edition of Wainwright’s Walking Guide to the Lake District Fells has been comprehensively revised. Paths, maps, diagrams and route descriptions have been checked and corrected throughout.
The original Pictorial Guide to the Far Eastern Fells of Lakeland – freshly reproduced from Wainwright’s original pages.
£12.99 - Hardback - ISBN 9780711236554 Out Now
£14.99 - Hardback - ISBN 9780711238497 July 2016
Stanfords is proud to support The Wainwright Prize and congratulates the shortlisted authors.
London ĂŻ stanfords.co.uk ĂŻ Bristol
L A S T
Y E A R ’ S
W I N N E R
Meadowland
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John Lewis-Stempel
unique and intimate account of an English meadow’s life from January to December, in exquisite prose, John Lewis-Stempel records the passage of the seasons from cowslips in spring to the hay-cutting of summer and grazing in autumn. It includes the biographies of the animals that inhabit the grass and the soil beneath: the badger clan, the fox family, the rabbit warren, the skylark brood and the curlew pair, among others. Their births, lives, and deaths are stories that thread through the book from first page to last. P u b L I s h e D b y b L AC K s WA N
John Lewis-Stempel is a writer and farmer. His many previous books include The Wild Life: A Year of Living on Wild Food, England: the Autobiography and Six Weeks:The Short and Gallant Life of the British Officer in the First World War. John’s latest book The Running Hare:The Secret Life of Farmland came out in May.
@wainwrightprize
Many thanks to the title sponsors:
Thank you to the judging panel:
The Wainwright Prize is a literary award that celebrates the very best writing on the outdoors, nature & travel in the UK, created in memory of Alfred Wainwright, whose pictorial guides to the Lakeland Fells are still available in lovingly reproduced form today.
Dame Fiona Reynolds Chair Fergus Collins Countryfile Magazine Julia Bradbury TV Presenter Sally Palmer The National Trust Magazine Bill Lyons Executive Editor of Countryfile Dan Lewis Stanfords
Thanks also to the Public Relations team at FMcM Associates.
Thanks to National Trust for their support
Thanks to Stanfords for their support
The Wainwright Prize is owned and created by Frances Lincoln Publishers Executive Director: Alastair Giles Designer: SteveWells Production Manager & design: Danielle Bowers
books
www.nationaltrustbooks.co.uk
PERSONAL CHALLENGES COME INN ALL SHAPES AND SIZES. RUNNING YOUR O FIRST MARATHON. NAILING THE RAT RACE. DITCHING YOUR JOB AND SETTING UP A BUSINESS. MAKING THAT FIRST F IMPRESSION. THEY ALL INVOLVVE PUSHING YOURSELF OUT OF THAT WARM AND A COSY COMFORT ZONE AND LAUNNCHING INTO YOUR PERSONAL ‘EXPEDITIION’. JUST WHAT THE FAMOUS LAKELAAND FELL WALKER ALFRED WAINWRIGHT,, INSPIRATION BEHIND THE GOLDEN EN BEER, CHAMPIONED THROUGHOUT HISS LIFE. RCEMGF HWNN QH çCXQWT NKIJVN[[ JQRRGF YKVJ UWDVNG UYGGV PQVGU CPF C FGNKECVG EKVTWU CTQOC YCKPYTKIJV IQNFGP DGGT KU VJG RGTHGEVN[[ TGHTGUJKPI TGYCTF HQT VJQUG YJQ VJKPM VJG[nXG GCTPGF KV SEARCH ‘ W AINWRIGHTGOLDENBEER’ EER’ Y Y Y Y C K P Y T K I J V I Q N F G P % ( ( 5 E Q W M
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