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  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409070863
  • Imprint: BBC Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

A Brush With Nature

25 years of personal reflections on nature




A stunning evocation of our natural world, from 'Britain's greatest living nature writer' (The Times).

Described as 'Britain's greatest living nature writer', Richard Mabey has revealed his passion for the natural world in eloquent stories for BBC Wildlife Magazine. This volume features his favourite pieces and presents a fascinating and inspiring view of the changing natural landscape in which we live.

Peppered throughout with references to the heritage of nature writing, and great writers from Richard Jefferies and John Clare to Roger Deakin and Robert MacFarlane, A Brush With Nature is part memoir, part nature journal, part social history, giving us a unique insight into a nature lover's reflections over a quarter of a century.

  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409070863
  • Imprint: BBC Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

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 A Brush With Nature

A golden evocation of flora and fauna, places, people and perspectives.

Susan Hill, The Lady

Getting hold of Brush With Nature in early March was like being given an unseasonable spell of warm weather in which everything in the natural world suddenly bursts into life ... Each [essay] feels like an outing, a trip with a supremely knowledgeable yet unpompous guide to somewhere new and fascinating.

Michael McCarthy, The Independent

Mabey's head is filled with the sights and sounds of exploration but also with the background hum of politics, science, poetry and prose, social history and the experiences of other amateur and professional ramblers. In these essays, Mabey is generous and inclusive, the mark of a rounded writer and man.

The Times