A beautiful book from a wonderful writer.

The reader is transported to a working Herefordshire farm where they journey through the life of a real, English meadow from Jan 1st to Dec 31st, wonderfully detailing what most wouldn't notice but what, to a meadow, are crucially important aspects of its eco system.

Sadly, and i mean extremely so, farmers like John are being driven out and intensive farming is systematically destroying not only the countryside fauna and flora, but also England as a sustainable island. But it is heartening to know that the real countryside and those that care for it are still out there and keeping these isolated islands of Nature alive so that hopefully, one day, if its not too late, we can wake up and stop the intensive farming and remake our countryside - fingers crossed.

I will certainly be reading more of John's books in the future and totally recommend this one to anyone with even the slightest interest in the Nature of rural England. ( )

Dont be deceived, beyond the simple idea, a farmers jottings about one field over the course of a year, is riveting. Not just any farmer of course. One of many preceding generations, who lived and absorbed all the daily going on this one field that he knows intimately. Not a blinkered look, but a far ranging inquisitive look, thinking, examining, researching and sharing a life's wealth of knowledge, experiences and cultural absorption brought to attention by the simple everyday events that occur within this one field.
A gentle read but packed with attention grabbing accounts, reflections, vernacular oddities, poetry and deep wildlife knowledge. Occasionally, briefly the wording get a tad flowery but then another gem of information smacks between the eyes.
If you care about the world we live in, the landscape we have inherited, the damage we have wrought to it and the resilience of nature to get-by despite all we have done and are doing, then this is a must read. It will leave you with a thirst for more natural life knowledge and hope for a future. ( )

Wonderful nature writing that brought me back to all the books I loved as a child: Gerald Durrell, James Herriot, Richard Adams and Joy Adamson.
He writes about the year, from month to month, of the intimate life of one meadow on the border of Wales and England, not far from where I grew up and rambled around in the countryside.
He has the eyes of a child, the inclinations of a farmer and the patience of a old-time naturalist.
This isn't at all fluffy; sometimes nature "is red in tooth and claw"
All in all a very satisfying little book. ( )

Meadowland: the private life of an English field by John Lewis-Stempel  
I am English and I read once that patriotism is a love of the land of your birth and is not to be confused with nationalism.  
 
Given that it appears to be purely random where we are born I have always found it odd that some people become inordinately proud of something that they had absolutely no hand in. To me it is like saying “I am proud to have knees”.
 
So I came to this book with a wary eye to say the least. That subsequently proved to be completely unnecessary. This is a book about England, not the political thing called England nor the social thing called England but the England that is in the soil and the hedgerows and the birdsong. This entire book is one long soliloquy to the English Countryside.
 
This is a book about birds, butterflies, insects, animals, trees, seasons, sun, rain and much, much more. It follows the life of a field and all that it contains for one entire year.
 
Like all great stories it has lots of sex, love, murder and intrigue but none of it involves humans. And therein lies its charm. There is no-one to like, love or hate. There is nothing between the land and the reader. The storyteller, by some magic, manages to disappear himself almost entirely doing that wonderful service of telling a great story without getting in the way.
 
This would have to be one of the best books I have read in a long time, but maybe it only works if you are English? ( )

It just looks like a regular field. It has a hedge around it, and it is full of grass with some muddy patches near the feeding troughs and the gate.

And you would think that is it. But it isn’t, trust me on this, it really isn’t. This field is teeming with life.

There are the red kites feasting on wild and domesticated animals, the badgers that patrol the field, the playful fox cubs, the hidden moles, visible only from their mounds, that try and consume the thousands of earthworms that populate the soil and the beasts that he rears for market. But the star of this book is the grasses and plants that populate his field, and the insect and bird life it supports. Where he is in Hereford, it is fortunate that it has not suffered from the effects of the industrial farming process that other parts of the country have, and the diversity of the wildlife in his field is greater than it would be elsewhere. But his land has not been immune to change; there have been some losses, such as the corncrake, and there are no doubt others.

Through his lyrical and occasionally poetic prose, Lewis-Stempel really brings his unspoilt small patch of England into crystal clear focus. Written as diary entries through a single year, he writes about other events and local characters that orbit and swirl though his life, about the history of the lands around, as well as the weather, a hugely important factor for any farmer. He has an eye for detail too; this book is full of the minutiae of the things happening in this field, from the differences and textures of the grasses to the way that everything is interdependent and reliant on each other all the way up and down the food chain. He uses the phrase, "a lawn is a meadow in captivity,” which is a perfect way of summing up the difference between a natural environment left to its own devices, and finds a balance, and that which is controlled and suppressed, and is deficient in so much life.

Lewis-Stempel’s passion for this land, his land is apparent all the way through the book. If you want to understand just how complex a simple meadow actually is, this is well worth reading. ( )