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A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER and BBC Radio 4 ´Book of the Week´ from ´indisputably, one of the best nature-writers of his generation´ (Country Life)

Written in diary format, The Wood is the story of English woodlands as they change with the seasons. Lyrical and informative, steeped in poetry and folklore, The Wood inhabits the mind and touches the soul.
For four years John Lewis-Stempel managed Cockshutt wood, a particular wood - three and half acres of mixed woodland in south west Herefordshire - that stands as exemplar for all the small woods of England. John coppiced the trees and raised cows and pigs who roamed free there. This is the diary of the last year, by which time he had come to know it from the bottom of its beech roots to the tip of its oaks, and to know all the animals that lived there - the fox, the pheasants, the wood mice, the tawny owl - and where the best bluebells grew. For many fauna and flora, woods like Cockshutt are the last refuge. It proves a sanctuary for John too.

To read The Wood is to be amongst its trees as the seasons change, following an easy path until, suddenly the view is broken by a screen of leaves, or your foot catches on a root, or a bird startles overhead. This is a wood you will never want to leave.

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"It is a pleasure to be in the company of a man who is so attuned to his woody world ... He is good at sketching nature, fixing a vivid image in the mind´s eye of a reader ... Lewis-Stempel has rightly won himself the reputation as being among our best nature writers ... The Wood is an entertaining, illuminating, well-turned read" Robbie Millen The Times 20180224

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John Lewis-Stempel is a writer and farmer. His previous books include The Wild Life: A Year of Living on Wild Food, Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field, which won the 2015 Wainwright Prize, The Running Hare: The Secret Life of Farmland, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Wainwright Prize, Where Poppies Blow, which won the prize, The Wood: The Life and Times of Cockshutt Wood, and most recently Still Water: The Deep Life of the Pond. John writes for Country Life and won the BMSE Columnist of the Year Award in 2016. He lives on the borders of England and Wales with his wife and two children.

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