The moving story of how, in just three generations, an ancient way of life was lost - as witnessed from the fields of a small Lake District farm
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.
Remarkable ... A brilliant, beautiful book ...
Eloquent, persuasive and electric with the urgency that comes
out of love -- Christine Patterson * The Sunday Times *
A heartfelt book and one that dares to hope. -- Alan
Bennett
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 *
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 *
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 *
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
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 *
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
James Rebanks's story of his family's farm is just about
perfect. It belongs with the finest writing of its kind --
Wendell Berry
A home-grown Georgics for the twenty-first century *
The Tablet *
A wonderful and timely account of one farmer's lifelong effort
to do right by his family, his land, his animals and his
ecosystem -- Nick Offerman
A book of toil and beauty, rooted in a fell farm in the Lake
District ... English Pastoral is a nuanced, hopeful, honest
story. It is essential reading. * Geographical Magazine *
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
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
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
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 combines the descriptive powers of a great
novelist with the pragmatic wisdom of a farmer who has watched his
world transformed. This is a profound and beautiful book about
the land, and how we should live off it. -- Ed Caesar
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
English Pastoral is a work of art. It is nourishing and
grounding to read ... this brave and beautiful book will
shape hearts and minds. -- Jane Clarke, author of When the Tree
Falls
A wonderful, humane book told through the eyes of a man who has
watched much vanish from his land, and now wants to put it back ...
Moving and illuminating. -- Benedict Macdonald, author of
Rebirding
James Rebanks describes the life of a Lakeland working farmer
from the inside with a unrivalled truth and eloquence -- Tom
Fort, author of Casting Shadows
Vivid, accessible, inspiring - a story about one man's emerging
land ethic, and an appreciation of the old ways in modern
times. A vital book for anybody who eats -- Kathryn Aalto,
author of Writing Wild
James Rebanks is a beautiful writer, in a unique position to
describe the challenges currently being faced by farmers throughout
the world. English Pastoral is a joy to read and extremely moving -
a book which should be read by every citizen. -- Patrick Holden,
Sustainable Food Trust
Farming, unlike almost any other job, is bound up in a series of
complex ropes that Rebanks captures in his own story so
beautifully: family pressure and loyalty, ego, loneliness, and a
special kind of peer pressure...English Pastoral is going to
be the most important book published about our countryside in
decades, if not a generation -- Sarah Langford
A deeply personal account by a farmer of what has happened to
farming in Britain. Everyone interested in food should read this
compelling, informative, moving book -- Jenny Linford
Rebanks is a rare find indeed: a Lake District farmer whose family
have worked the land for 600 years, with a passion to save the
countryside and an elegant prose style to engage even the most
urban reader. He's refreshingly realistic about how farmed and wild
landscapes can coexist and technology can be tamed. A story for us
all. * Evening Standard, Best Books of Autumn 2020 *
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 * Guardian *
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 *
James Rebanks has a sharp eye and a lyrical heart.
His book is devastating, charting the murderous and
unsustainable revolution in modern farming ... But it is also
uplifting: Rebanks is determined to hang on to his
Herdwicks, to keep producing food, and to bring back the curlews
and butterflies and the soil fertility to his beloved fields.
Truly a significant book for our time. * Daily Mail - Books
of the Year *
Lyrical and illuminating ... will fascinate city-dwellers and
country-lovers alike. * Independent - 10 Best Non-Fiction Books
of 2020 *
A lyrical account of Rebanks' childhood on the Lake District farm
that he's made famous; an account of how he learned about
stockmanship and community and the rhythms of the land from his
father and grandfather. [...] His writing is properly Romantic,
which is a high compliment [...] Rebanks is obviously a wonderful
human as well as a splendid writer. -- Charles Foster
A home-grown Georgics for the twenty-first century *
The Tablet *
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