Richard Mabey is one of Britain's most celebrated and influential nature writers. He was born in Hertfordshire in 1941. He grew up with a deep connection to the English countryside, particularly the chalk hills and mixed woodlands of the Chilterns, which would become a recurring landscape in his writing. Here’s a look at some of his books.
A Brush with Nature is a charming collection of essays that brings together a selection of Mabey's favourite columns, originally written for BBC Wildlife Magazine over a period of twenty-five years. This book is part memoir and part nature journal. It's a deeply personal, often lyrical account of the author’s encounters with plants and animals, his observations about landscapes, and the subtle rhythms of the seasons.
The Ash and the Beech is a book about trees and our relationship with them. It's a collection of observations and reflections about woodlands and the threat that they are under, both natural and man-made, particularly at a time that we need them the most. There's a lot of natural history here, written with the passion and poetry that Mabey is known for, along with his observations on the relationship between art and nature, the way we see and depict rural, natural landscapes and how that influences our treatment of them.
Turning the Boat for Home is a collection of broadly autobiographical essays collected from the many decades of Richard Mabey’s writing. He says in the introduction that unlike a lot of writers that he admires, he’s unable to look back over his life and remember enough of what happened when to write a traditional memoir, and he isn’t particularly inclined to try. But what fascinates him is his work, being in nature and writing about it. So, when he felt the need in his seventies to look back at his life, it was the story of his work that he wanted to tell. This book is the result.
The Cabaret of Plants is perhaps his most ambitious work, ranging across centuries and continents to explore how plants have shaped human imagination, from the earliest cave art to modern genetics. This is a wide-ranging meditation on the relationship between humans and the plant kingdom across history and science, art and culture.
Nature Cure (2005) is probably his most personal book. This a memoir in which he describes a bout of prolonged and serious depression that he tackled by immersing himself in nature and the wilderness. It’s an honest look at mental illness and how it can derail your life, juxtaposed against the power of the natural world to help and to heal us.
Mabey's writing is consistently accessible and engaging. The central theme of his work is our relationship with nature and the way we live and work within the landscapes that we inhabit. He writes about nature's independence, its resilience, and its profound impact on our lives, often questioning human intervention in the name of conservation.