The acclaimed chronicle of the regeneration of one family's
traditional English farm
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Winner of the Wainwright Prize for Nature
Writing * Named "Nature Book of the Year" by the Sunday Times * New
York Times Editors' Choice * Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the
Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize * A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR:
Sunday Times, Financial Times, New Statesman, Independent, Telegraph,
Observer, and Daily Mail
"Superbly written and deeply insightful, the book captivates the
reader until the journey's end." -- Wall Street Journal
The New York Times bestselling author of The Shepherd's Life
profiles his family's farm across three generations, revealing through
this intimate lens the profound global transformation of agriculture and
of the human relationship to the land.
As a boy, James Rebanks's grandfather taught him to work the land the
old way. Their family farm in England's Lake District hills was part of
an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of
pastures grazed with livestock, and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. And
yet, by the time James inherited the farm, it was barely recognizable.
The men and women had vanished from the fields; the old stone barns had
crumbled; the skies had emptied of birds and their wind-blown song.
Hailed as "a brilliant, beautiful book" by the Sunday Times (London),
Pastoral Song (published in the United Kingdom under the title
English Pastoral) is the story of an inheritance: one that affects us
all. It tells of how rural landscapes around the world were brought
close to collapse, and the age-old rhythms of work, weather, community
and wild things were lost. And yet this elegy from the northern fells is
also a song of hope: of how, guided by the past, one farmer began to
salvage a tiny corner of England that was now his, doing his best to
restore the life that had vanished and to leave a legacy for the future.
This is a book about what it means to have love and pride in a place,
and how, against all the odds, it may still be possible to build a new
pastoral: not a utopia, but somewhere decent for us all.
[Published in the United Kingdom as English Pastoral.]
