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  • Published: 4 March 2021
  • ISBN: 9781529111958
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $32.99

Turning the Boat for Home

A life writing about nature




Britain's most influential nature writers reflects on a lifetime of close observation and celebrates the positive force of the natural world

'One of our greatest nature writers' Guardian

For over fifty years, Richard Mabey has been a pioneering voice in modern nature writing. This book collects pieces across his rich career, tracing his continually evolving ideas as much as the profound changes in our environment. From the rediscovery of food foraging in the 1970s, to reflections on the musicality of birdsong, these essays show Mabey's passionate belief that our planet is a commonwealth for all species, and that our reconnection with the living world is more vital than ever.

'Richard Mabey is among the best writers at work in Britain' Tim Dee

'Poised where nature meets culture, [Mabey] is knowledgeable, politically savvy and wry, and an excellent naturalist' New Statesman

  • Published: 4 March 2021
  • ISBN: 9781529111958
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $32.99

About the author

Richard Mabey

Richard Mabey is the acclaimed author of some thirty books including Gilbert White, which won the Whitbread Biography Award in 1986, Flora Britannica(1995), winner of a National Book Award, and Nature Cure (2005), which was short-listed for three major literary awards, the Whitbread, Ondaatje, and J.R. Ackerley prizes. He writes for the GuardianNew Statesman and Granta, and contributes frequently to BBC radio. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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Praise for Turning the Boat for Home

Richard Mabey is among the best writers at work in Britain. I don't mean among the best nature writers, I mean the best writers, full stop. I would read anything he wrote, but if such a thing as nature writing exists and flourishes today it is thanks almost entirely to him. I have lived by his books for all of my life. Pretty much all of what nature means to me, I know thanks to his own lifelong clear-eyed but loving investigation of what it means to him. He has allowed us all to think about modern nature – our world - but also, crucially, to feel it too. I cannot imagine a truer green man.

Tim Dee

One figure, like no other, looms large in setting the ground for the contemporary form that has come to be called then New Nature Writing. Richard Mabey is an author whose work has consistently pioneered new ways of thinking about landscape, nature, place, culture and the range of interconnections that all of these share. Often this has meant reminding us of old ways of thinking about these things but he has always had a sharp eye for the new meanings our modern context provokes.

Jos Smith

One of our most influential writers on the natural world

Gardens Illustrated

A valuable contribution to a great cause

John Jolliffe, Spectator

Poised where nature meets culture, he [Richard Mabey] is knowledgeable, politically savvy and wry, and an excellent naturalist

Kathleen Jamie, New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

A vintage collection that shows the evolution of his [Mabey’s] thinking, perfect for chilling out

Liz Else, New Scientist