In 1789, as the revolution tore French society apart, a unique book was published in Britain. It consisted mainly of letters written by a Hampshire parson to a pair of well-known naturalists. These letters were filled with observations relating to the animals and plants in his parish. The author, using a method he described as ‘watching narrowly’, combined a scientific approach with a poetic style. The letters were later collected by the parson’s brother and published under the title The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. Since then, the book has never been out of print; according to some accounts, it’s the fourth most-published text in English, after the Bible, Shakespeare’s collected works and The Pilgrim’s Progress. 

The parson’s name was Gilbert White. He is both the model and the inspiration for the farmer and nature writer John Lewis-Stempel. The priest, Lewis-Stempel believes, has been unfairly neglected by scientific historians: treated as an amateur, his religious beliefs have made him seem unreliable. In fact, his faith was what lay behind his ‘intense personal wonder at the world’, and Lewis-Stempel feels some sympathy here, describing himself as the last religious nature writer. Like White, most of his books have focused on the local: a single meadow or pond; a specific breed of animal. However, in England: A Natural History, his perspective widens. Each of the book’s twelve chapters focuses on a different landscape, from the woods of Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire to the shores of Portreath in Cornwall, and from Spaunton Moor in North Yorkshire to Crummock Water in the Lake District. Based on dozens of visits over the course of decades, these chapters offer a tour of the entire country and the diverse habitats it contains. Lewis-Stempel calls it his ‘swansong … my last full-size book on Nature’.

The book is filled with facts. For instance, Lewis-Stempel tells us that meadow ants can live for up to twenty years. Cornwall rises and falls by as much as fifteen centimetres with the outgoing and incoming tides. England has more oaks over four centuries old than all other European countries