English Pastoral

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 * A wonder of a book, fierce, tender, and beautiful. Deeply personal but also global in significance, its pages course with love and concern so palpable I more than once wept while reading it. James Rebanks writes lyrically and passionately of the shadow that has fallen over our relationship with land, and how we might reconfigure the ways we think about it, relate to it, interact with it, and with each other. It's both a sobering, urgent read and a deeply inspiring, hopeful one. The book, and author, are to be treasured -- Helen Macdonald * author of H is for Hawk * Powerful, important and deserves every accolade. -- Raynor Winn 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 James Rebanks's story of his family's farm is just about perfect. It belongs with the finest writing of its kind -- Wendell Berry 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 * 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 * Telegraph * Marvellous and moving -- Richard Flanagan, Man Booker Prize winning author of Narrow Road to the Deep North 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 * Guardian * 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 Pu

James Rebanks is a farmer based in the Lake District, where his family have lived and worked for over six hundred years. His No.1 bestselling debut, The Shepherd's Life, won the Lake District Book of the Year, was shortlisted for the Wainwright and Ondaatje prizes, and has been translated into sixteen languages. His second book, English Pastoral, was also a Top Ten bestseller and was named the Sunday Times Nature Book of the Year. Heralded as a 'masterpiece' by the New Statesman, it won the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing and was named Fortnum and Mason Food Book of the Year; it was also shortlisted for the Orwell and Ondaatje prizes, and longlisted for the Rathbones Folio award.