The Running Hare: The Secret Life Of Farmland

Product Description

The Sunday Times Bestseller
- SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2017 Traditional ploughland is disappearing Seven cornfield flowers have become extinct in the last twenty years Once abundant the corn bunting & the lapwing are on the Red List The corncrake is all but extinct in England & the hare is running for its life Written in exquisite prose The Running Hare tells the story of the wild animals & plants that live in & under our ploughland from the labouring microbes to the patrolling kestrel above the corn from the linnet pecking at seeds to the seven-spot ladybird that eats the aphids that eat the crop It recalls an era before open-roofed factories & silent empty fields recording the ongoing destruction of the unique fragile glorious ploughland that exists just down the village lane But it is also the story of ploughland through the eyes of man who took on a field & husbanded it in a natural traditional way restoring its fertility & wildlife bringing back the old farmland flowers & animals John Lewis Stempel demonstrates that it is still possible to create a place where the hare can rest safe Shortlisted for the Richard Jefferies Society White Horse Bookshop Prize 2016 John Lewis-Stempel was winner of the Thwaites Wainwright Prize 2015 for MEADOWLAND