The custom of the English nature author is lengthy, proud and distinctly genteel. Its origins lie with the pioneering 18th-century curate Gilbert White, writing from his inherited household house in Selborne, Hampshire. He options in a fantastic new piece of nature writing, England: A pure historical past (Doubleday/Transworld) when the writer observes that “the parson had the time to face and stare”.
That writer, John Lewis-Stempel, additionally has the parson’s luxurious. A profitable author with a string of nature books behind him, he explores 12 English landscapes, from the Thames estuary to…