Books on The Countryside and Country Life

The ideal portable companion, the world-renowned Collins Gem series returns with a fresh new look and updated material.

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, and 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.

5 stars

The first book to explore the cooking and communities of Shetland, with lavish photography of these spectacular isles

The author spent five years spent alone in a hillside cottage in Wales. He immersed himself in the rugged British landscape, exploring nature's unspoilt wilderness and man's relationship with it. It is the story of what it means to live in a place so remote that you may not see another soul for weeks on end.

Over 40 years ago, Carole Bamford began a journey towards a more conscious way of life. From sustainable farming to holistic health, Nurture shares Carole Bamford's vision for a more mindful way of life and how we can all nourish our bodies, mind and spirit in a simple and balanced way.

Sheep have to be one of the most versatile livestock animals on the planet. All-in-one grazing and fertilising machines, they provide meat and milk for our tables, wool for clothing, carpets, and insulation, skins for leather and rugs, and a whole host of other products....

On the Marshes is Carol Donaldson's extraordinary evocation of the north Kentish marshes, told through a long walk taken across this liminal landscape, in search of the people and wildlife that make this unusual landscape their home.

The classic foraging guide to over 200 types of food that can be gathered and picked in the wild, Food for Free returns in its 40th year as a sumptuous, beautifully illustrated and fully updated anniversary edition.

Ann Cleeves' bestselling series of crime novels, featuring Detective Jimmy Perez, and now also adapted for a major BBC television series, draw their inspiration from the place in which they take place: Shetland. An archipelago of more than 100 islands, it is the one of the most remote places in the United Kingdom. Its 1500 miles of shore mean that wherever one stands, there is a view of the sea....

For the last six years of his life, Roger Deakin kept notebooks in which he wrote his daily thoughts, impressions, feelings and observations about and around his home, Walnut Tree Farm. This title collects his writings, capturing his restless curiosity about nature and his impressions of our changing world.

An original manual of basic country skills that is suitable for people living in the country, the city and everywhere in between. It contains practical advice on how to cultivate a garden, buy land, bake bread, raise farm animals, milk a goat, grow herbs, churn butter, cook on a wood stove, over 2000 recipes, and more.

Writer Ed Douglas and photographer John Beatty are close friends and have a shared history with Kinder going back decades. In Kinder Scout: The People's Mountain they reveal the social, political, cultural and ecological developments that have shaped the physical and human landscape of this enigmatic and treasured hill.

An exploration of the relationship between humans and the charismatic and elusive hare.

In the first book from the highly successful Channel 4 television series, Penelope Keith's Hidden Villages, we explore the most interesting and beautiful examples of British village life in this lavishly illustrated book.

A glorious celebration of the seasons and the simple pleasures of walking from the archives of the National Trust.

The feel of the book has a lot in common with the country walks Tom Cox was on when he composed much of it: it's bewitched by fresh air, intrepid in minor ways, haunted by weather and old stories and the spooky edges of the outdoors, restless, sometimes foolish, and prone to a few detours...

4 stars

It is difficult to think of a more quintessential symbol of the British countryside than the British Hedgerow, bursting with blackberries, hazelnuts and sloes, and home to oak and ash, field mice and butterflies. But as much as we might dream about foraging for mushrooms or collecting wayside nettles for soup, most of us are unaware of quite how profoundly hedgerows have shaped the history of our...

The Village News is a whimsical, funny and informative travelogue by pedal power of a variety of villages across our nation that encapsulate, or showcase, all the best elements of what could be seen as the English village.

This winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1975, and listed by the New York Times as one of the best 100 non-fiction books of the century, gives timeless reflections on solitude, writing and faith amid the beautiful though sometimes brutal world of nature on the author's doorstep in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains.

A SELECTION EDITED AND INTRODUCED BY WILLIAM PLOMERFrancis Kilvert was an country clergyman who lived from 1840 to 1879, and these are his diaries: gossipy, sweet-natured, generous, curious, and full of an abiding wonder and delight in the natural world and the beauties of the changing seasons.