The nature writer sets out in search England’s green and pleasant land – but leaves a lot unexplored

What is the duty of the nature writer? It’s a question nature writers love to ask themselves. The more optimistic might say that their task is to mend humanity’s broken relationship with the natural world; pessimists that their role is merely to “bear witness” to life on a dying planet. As the nature-writing genre continues to flourish – in terms of sales, at least – the answer from publishers might be that the first duty of the nature writer is simply to write.

John Lewis-Stempel certainly seems to have followed that instruction. He is the author of some 17 books on the natural world – The Running Hare, The Sheep’s Tale, The Soaring Life of the Lark, etc – and he is the only person to have twice won the Wainwright prize for nature writing. A remarkable career, especially when you consider that writing isn’t even his day job. He divides his time between his valley farm in Herefordshire and his potager in south-west France and claims to write his books “on bits of paper while I’m working down on the farm. Scraps on scraps.”