The countryside, country life: general interest
Showing all 15 results
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A brief history of the countryside in 100 objects
£10.99A brief history of the countryside in 100 objects
A Waterstones Best Book of 2024: Nature Writing
The untold story of rural Britain revealed through its artefacts
?‘A really lovely, fascinating book. I dived straight into this clever, joyous, celebration of nature, history, and – of course – the countryside.’ Charles Spencer, author of The White Ship
£10.99 -
Birds as individuals
£16.99Birds as individuals
Enter the secret lives of Britain’s ordinary garden birds and the brilliant, unconventional woman who opened her doors to them. In the late 1930s, Len Howard packed up her life in London, bought a plot of land in Sussex and built herself a little house there. This was to be Bird Cottage, a place where the doors of the house were open to the birds of the garden – great tits, blue tits, robins, blackbirds, willow warblers and many others. Len lived the rest of her life alongside her bird neighbours, with some sleeping in her bedroom and many flitting in and out all day long. This is the book she wrote about the birds – a study not just of their behaviour but their individual personalities. We learn about their intelligence, emotional lives, and characters, their capacity for play and humour, the range of their song, their likes and dislikes, and their bond with Len.
£16.99 -
Cider With Rosie
£9.99Cider With Rosie
This is a vivid memoir of childhood in a remote Cotswold village, a village before electricity or cars, a timeless place on the verge of change. Growing up amongst the fields and woods and characters of the place, Laurie Lee depicts a world that is both immediate and real and belonging to a now distant past.
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Land smart
£20.00Land smart
We need land for so many of humanity’s growing needs, such as food, renewable energy, carbon storage and housing. Traditionally, we’ve stolen it from nature, but this has led to a mounting toll of extinction and pollution that is now punishing us. So, as there’s no land left to take, how do we get more from the same, or preferably less. Tom Heap, a presenter on BBC TV’s Countryfile, Radio 4’s new Rare Earth series and the anchor of The Climate Show on Sky News, tours the British countryside meeting the farmers, scientists, conservationists and even warehouse managers who are solving the most pressing challenges facing our countryside and the world. If we use land cleverly it can give both humanity and nature the space to thrive on just the one planet. If not, we’re in trouble.
£20.00 -
Raising hare
£18.99Raising hare
Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and snoozed in your house for hours on end. This happened to me. When lockdown led busy professional Chloe to leave the city and return to the countryside of her childhood, she never expected to find herself custodian of a newly born hare. Yet when she finds the creature, endangered, alone and no bigger than her palm, she is compelled to give it a chance at survival. ‘Raising Hare’ chronicles their journey together and the challenges of caring for the leveret and preparing for its return to the wild.
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Renaturing
£18.99Renaturing
Twenty years ago, James Canton moved from London to the English countryside. Behind his farm labourer’s cottage was a small field with a ‘for sale’ sign. At first it was a site for family picnics and cricket matches with friends, but James knew that the two-acre patch of earth held more potential – as a place for nature to return and flourish. Here is the story of how, over a number of years, he undertook a project to ‘rewild’ the field: digging a pond, forging meadowlands, creating habitats for birds and insects, encouraging flowers and plants that support pollinators and wildlife. Eventually what was once just a grassy space was again buzzing with life.
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Scattering plenty
£22.99Scattering plenty
As we plan the future of the British countryside, it’s time to consider those who formed the modern-day landscape as we know it.
£22.99 -
Soulful Nature
£14.99Soulful Nature
In Soulful Nature, Brian Draper and Howard Green encourage you to get outside and make deeper connections with creation and its creator. They chart walking journeys through rural landscapes and town streets over the course of a year, showing how the natural cycle of the changing seasons can awaken us to the rhythms of our own lives.
£14.99 -
The curious life of the cuckoo
£9.99The curious life of the cuckoo
Is there any bird more mysterious than the cuckoo? It is invariably heard, and not seen. And if seen, it is mistaken for a sharp-winged hawk. The female cuckoo – by a trick that borders on alchemy – is able to disguise its egg as another’s. In Greek myth the god Zeus assumed the form of a cuckoo to seduce Hera. But we forgive the cuckoo its con-artistry, because it is the true herald of spring. It is the bird that uplifts our wintered hearts, with that first two-note ‘cuk-koo’ unmistakable as it sounds across the country. John Lewis-Stempel explains one of nature’s greatest enigmas in vivid, lyrical prose, and celebrates this iconic bird.
£9.99 -
The garden against time
£10.99The garden against time
From one of our most original contemporary voices, The Garden Against Time is an inventive and deeply felt exploration of the long dream of a shared Eden, a common paradise.
£10.99 -
The honesty box
£16.99The honesty box
‘The Honesty Box’ is a beautiful and much-needed book about what it is like to be in a relationship with someone who is neurodivergent and the challenges it can bring. Lucy Brazier’s story highlights just how life-changing a diagnosis can be, and how it can truly save relationships.
£16.99 -
The new rector
£9.99The new rector
When Peter Harris arrives in Turnham Malpas as the new rector, he finds the villagers welcoming but set in their ways. Then a gruesome murder points to a killer in their midst. Peter’s role is crucial but he is wrestling with his own private hell.
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The power and the glory
£25.00The power and the glory
In the decades before the First World War, the owners of the nation’s stately homes revelled in a golden age of glory and glamour. Nothing lay beyond their reach in a world where privilege and hedonism went hand-in-hand with duty and honour. This was a time when the ancestral seats of ancient nobility stood side-by-side with the fabulous palaces of Jewish bankers and Indian princes, when dukes and duchesses mixed with aristocratic society hostesses who had learned to dance in the chorus line and self-made millionaires who had been raised in the slums of Manchester and Birmingham. ‘The Power and the Glory’ explores the country house during this golden age, when Britain ruled over a quarter of the world’s population, when its stately homes were at their most opulent and when, for the privileged few, life in the country house was the best life of all.
£25.00 -
Under the changing skies
£20.00Under the changing skies
For over a century, The Guardian’s ‘Country Diary’ has published the nation’s most celebrated writers of natural history as they capture the essence of the British countryside. From Yorkshire to Belfast, Orkney to Cumbria, and Gwynedd to the Scottish Highlands, exquisitely written and softly observed snapshots emerge – of fishes lurking in dusky pools, of age-old trees beneath deep blue skies, of lives being lived alongside the ebbs and flows of the natural world. Bringing together the finest contributions to the column from recent years, ‘Under the Changing Skies’ is an essential companion for all those with a deep love for the British countryside, charting its subtle changes over the course of the seasons.
£20.00 -
Windswept
£10.99Windswept
‘Windswept is a wonderful work, prose painted in bold, bright strokes like a Scottish Colourist’s canvas’ ROBERT MACFARLANE
‘An instant classic of British nature-writing’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
£10.99