England’s Best Writers on the Natural World
We often hear of the wonderful writers from years ago (and many of them are profiled on this site). But who are today’s good nature writers, trying to inspire and reverse (through the power of the pen) damage done by industry and politics?
Robert MacFarlane (below) has just co-written a beautiful (and hopeful) book on nature for children: The World to Come.
Robert MacFarlane & Jackie Morris (artist)
Robert Macfarlane is a fellow of Emmanuel College (Cambridge) and has written phenomenal books on nature including Underland and The Lost Words (a giant book recounting lost words of nature, alongside Welsh artist Jackie Morris).
Stephen Morris
Stephen Moss is is a natural historian who teaches writing at Bath University, and is best known for producing TV programs featuring bird-watching Bill Oddie.
The book above is just one of a series that you can find at the bookshop: he’s also written books on skylarks, robins, wrens and many other native wildlife (not just birds!)
Paul Kingsnorth
Paul Kingsnorth has been called ‘England’s greatest living writer’ even though he now lives in western Ireland. A former deputy editor of The Ecologist magazine, his book Real England looked at how globalisation was destroying orchards to village pubs.
Today he has converted from ‘eco paganism’ to find peace as an Orthodox Christian, and strongly believes that faith and religion are the way to find our way back, to protecting the planet.
His recent profiles of ‘lives of the wild saints‘ is soon to be published as a book. And his new book Against the Machine (on how technology is starting to take over spirituality) is due to publish in September 2025.
You’ll never see a bee who seems lost, never see a bee who doesn’t seem at home in this world. It is only humans who aren’t at home here. Paul Kingsnorth
An Irish Playwright (who adored animals)
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright (who lived with his wife in Hertfordshire), who wrote over 60 plays (including Pygmalion, which later was made into the film My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn).
Known for his strong political views (he was against organised religion), he was a vegetarian passionate about animal welfare. He also was teetotal, did not smoke, nor even drink tea or coffee!
Animals are my friends. And I don’t eat my friends. George Bernard Shaw
Apparently he ate a very frugal diet for the first 42 years of life, until he married (his wife was wealthy and a good cook, and would serve him vegetarian feasts until their 80s, when she died).
She noted that despite his healthy lifestyle, he had a very sweet tooth, and would enjoy rich chocolate desserts that the vegetarian societies would not have approved of!
George was pretty eccentric! He and his wife lived in a house in Hertfordshire, and he would orient his shed, so that it would rotate to face the light through the day, so he could keep writing!
Although he was the only writer to receive both an Oscar and a Nobel Prize for Literature, he credited the National Gallery of Ireland for almost all his education, not his school!
And he was so passionate about helping underprivileged people, that his dream was to create a new simpler alphabet, so it would make it easier for everyone to literate, to find jobs and income!
He did indeed create a Slavian alphabet (with more – 40 letters). But it never came to fruition, although purists still apparently use it today. We think it looks terribly complicated!
But there is no doubt that this wonderful man and writer, did all he could to make the world a better place. He died at the ripe old age of 94, not long after he fell and broke his thigh, while planting a fruit tree.
This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose, instead of a selfish little clod of grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. My life belongs to the community, I want to be thoroughly used up when I die.
Life is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment. And I want to make it burn as brightly as possible, before handing it on to future generations. George Bernard Shaw
