Englightening and stylish...Readers who enjoyed the author’s last book, Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field, will find much in the same vein here: a mix of agricultural history, rural lore, topographical description and childhood memories. I learned a good deal.... Lewis-Stempel is a fine stylist, adroitly conjuring scenes in which “medieval mist hangs in the trees” or “frost clenches the ground”..." (Sara Wheeler Observer)

Along the way we learn a little about seemingly everything rural - agricultural history, scientific studies of bird and wildlife decline, botany, modern agriculture, Lepidoptera, Shakespeare, agrarian poetry, and the history of English hedges, just to name a few. The Running Hare pub is in St David’s Park, Ewloe, North Wales. You’ll find us just off the A494, close to Junction 33B of the A55 (North Wales Expressway). We’re also close to the B5125, handy for families visiting from Mancot, Sandycroft, and Dobshill.

However, this book brings with it much hope; that old traditions never die and can be resurrected amongst our polluted rolling hills. It is confirmation that Nature is a miraculous living being in her own right and that she will flourish when we take the trouble to learn her ways and how to work with her through the seasons. The Running Hare is just the most sumptuously gorgeous book. John Lewis-Stempel is simply the best of the many outstanding nature writers we have today. His forte is writing in great detail about very small areas - by concentrating our minds on the detail he expands our knowledge and view of the world around us.

Shortlisted for the Richard Jefferies Society White Horse Bookshop Prize 2016. John Lewis-Stempel was winner of the Thwaites Wainwright Prize 2015 for MEADOWLAND. In a way, this book reads like a love letter to the English countryside, and one field in particular. There is a heady mix of agricultural history, rural folklore, geography, childhood memories and an odd grab-bag of facts. For example, in an aside on the joys of ploughing by hand, we learn that the ploughman’s lunch was an invention by the British Cheese Bureau in the 1950s to increase the sales of cheese!

Nearly 3.5) This is the record of a year of old-fashioned farming: Lewis-Stempel rented a several-acre field called Flinders, planted wildflowers in with his wheat and corn, and plowed it himself. Not a pesticide in sight. He attracted hares and other mammals, as well as numerous species of birds – all in all, much more life than your average field farmed by modern methods. His latest work, La Vie, (2023) describes his experience in 'la France profonde'. [7] Personal life [ edit ]

John Lewis-Stempel is an English farmer, writer, and Sunday Times Top 5 best selling author. He was born in Herefordshire, where his family have lived for over 700 years. [1] Career [ edit ] He sows the small field by hand. He also sows wide margins of wildflowers, to replicate the way fields had existed in the days before mechanical reaping and sowing, and lays out tables of seed to entice the birds. He uses no chemicals on his fields, and when he reaps he bundles the wheat into old-fashioned sheaves. This level of understanding and appreciation for the lives and tendencies of our fellow wild creatures raises the bar and shows us that it's always a relationship of give and take, with us - the humans - using our minds to comprehend how things are and how we can consciously make the best contribution for the highest good of everyone (and everything). Having so enjoyed a year in the life of The Wood by John Lewis-Stempel (reviewed here on Goodreads), I was even more absorbed by 'The Running Hare' which shares the story of a barren field transformed into a sanctuary for Nature and a golden sea of wheat - sown and scattered using the traditional tools and methods of the old farming ways.He describes beautifully the changing of the seasons and the habits of animals such as the hares that make their home in his field. The book is a superb piece of nature writing." (Ian Critchley Sunday Times)