Farmer and writer John Lewis-Stempel’s account of a year in the life of a meadow has beaten Helen Macdonald’s bestselling H is for Hawk to win the Thwaites Wainwright Prize for nature writing.
Lewis-Stempel’s Meadowland, detailing life in a Herefordshire farm meadow from January to December – from the cowslips of spring to the badger clan who live in the field – was awarded the £5,000 prize last night. Chair of judges Fiona Reynolds said his prose “reached for perfection” and was combined “with an authentic passion for a land the author knows to the depths of his bones”.
“An utterly captivating book, we found Lewis-Stempel’s narrative original and inspiring. Bewitchingly beautiful, honest and effortless, this is a book that should make us all want to explore the wonders and realities of nature on our doorsteps,” she said. Reynolds is former director general of The National Trust and current master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
The title beat Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, winner of the Samuel Johnson prize and the Costa book of the year award, as well as Richard Askwith’s Running Free, William Atkins’s The Moor, Mark Cocker’s Claxton, and Philip Marsden’s Rising Ground – a shortlist described by Reynolds as “exceptionally strong”.
The award, given by publishers Frances Lincoln in association with the National Trust to celebrate the legacy of British nature writer Alfred Wainwright, sets out to reward the best nature and travel writing in the UK. Organisers said this was a period of “renaissance” for the sector, with “a host of non-fiction writers drawing inspiration from a variety of interactions with the natural world around them”.
