The Shepherd’s Life : A Tale of the Lake District

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER’Affectionate, evocative, illuminating. A story of survival – of a flock, a landscape and a disappearing way of life. I love this book’ Nigel Slater’Triumphant, a pastoral for the 21st century’ Helen Davies, Sunday Times, Books of the Year’The nature publishing sensation of the year, unsentimental yet luminous’ Melissa Harrison, The Times, Books of the YearSome people’s lives are entirely their own creations.

James Rebanks’ isn’t. The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd himself, he and his family have lived and worked in and around the Lake District for generations. Their way of life is ordered by the seasons and the work they demand, and has been for hundreds of years.

A Viking would understand the work they do: sending the sheep to the fells in the summer and making the hay; the autumn fairs where the flocks are replenished; the gruelling toil of winter when the sheep must be kept alive, and the light-headedness that comes with spring, as the lambs are born and the sheep get ready to return to the fells.