The Confessions of a Longlister

It was barely 9 o'clock in the morning. Having settled myself in the office to compile yesterday's entry in my written diary, the doorbell rang. Descending two steps at a time, I arrived at the front door.

"Andrew?"

"Yes, that's me"

"Just need a photo mate" as he handed a large brown package over to me. 

"Great, have a good day mate" and with that he, my new best mate, the unknown courier, sped off. 

An early morning package

 

 At the moment of possibly needing urgent medical attention, I agreed last year to be a longlist judge for the Richard Jefferies Award for nature writing. A previous judge, John Price, was stepping down from the role. The current chair of the Richard Jefferies Society asked me if I'd be willing to step into the void. John, as a bookseller, academic, past headmaster, the man who discovered the rare endemic St Helena Boxwood plant on the island of the same name, and an all round inspirational mentor, provisioned the most daunting steps for me to follow. Delighted, terrified and intrigued in equal measure, I said yes. After that decision, John issued me with a caution, "Annually, we receive around forty submissions. That is a lot of reading in a year."

Over the decade or so it has been running, this award, with a £1000 prize, has been operated by the Richard Jefferies Society thanks to a generous bequest. Winners of the award often later appear in the Wainwright Prize shortlists. It's a similar demographic, though the Richard Jefferies Award only has one category – to best reflect the heritage, content and sense of place that is so strong in Jefferies’ countryside works. That, and having only been an original publication in the relevant calendar year.

To date, twenty-seven books have been submitted for 2026, and I have read around three quarters. Time for a confession? I speed read.

It would be almost impossible to read every word on each page, and still maintain a normal life. Instead, and this was mastered during my media days, I scan the beginning and end of a paragraph or page, only reading with normal intensity if that initial scan piques some nascent interest. That pique could be a word, phrase or simply a general feeling. There are no hard rules to this.

The package which arrived this morning contained a paperback, a nature memoir of a child growing up in the 1960s and 70s. My era, it looks interesting, and immediately the back cover piqued my interest – 'of a woman who dedicated her life to transforming food and farming'. Only time will tell.

Not every book creates piques. As we are still judging, there are no titles to reveal. However, many nature writers these days publish descriptions of what they emotionally feel when within nature. Mindfulness if you will. These books are fascinating to read, yet wildlife encounter often plays a scant second fiddle to mental health, coming to terms with grief or saving the writer from the urban stress of modern life. Few writers now observe wildlife just for the purpose of the observation of wildlife. And that makes longlist judging challenging and fascinating.

Remembering what the award is '[to] reflect the heritage, content and sense of place', a book on walking in forests to rekindle a lost sense of purpose after a bereavement, may have a sense of place, but lacks any wildlife content other than simply being outdoors. However, what is compelling for me is that I am reading authors I've not heard of, I'm reading books I'd probably overlook on a shop display. I'm being removed from my comfort zone. The process is opening my eyes to, and piquing an interest in, modern nature writing.

Yet, it is unavoidable, inevitable in some ways, that a long list of nature classics sits fossilised in the recesses of anyone well-read enough, who is then tasked with the role of longlister. Possibly beginning with Gilbert White, selectively through to Richard Jefferies, of course, W. H. Hudson, Henry Williamson, Thoreau, John Muir, BB, Gavin Maxwell. To authors such as Richard Mabey, Roger Deakin, Nan Shepherd or Kenneth Allsop. They all encircle the modern reader, subtly attaching their creative ideas into our subconscious. But to what effect? Is John Muir's much admired classic Steep Trails (published after his death) – exploring the spirit of discovery, any more influential than Jefferies' Story of my Heart – exploring mystical experiences with the natural world, or Maxwell's Ring of Bright Water – his relationship with an otter, or a book extolling the benefit of wild swimming for mental health, published this year? I'm tempted to say, yes to all the above. However, explaining that conclusion might prove tricky. Maybe it is no then? 

I live in 2026, not 1926, nor 1826. Writers reflect the norms of society in their time, mostly. A few punch through the melee to create a tidy wave of change – think Rachel Carson. Most, however, write alongside the general flotsam of what can be termed a financially accepted benchmark. After all, writers need to live. Readers like to know what they're getting. A book that sells well today, clones additional money-spinners. Yet, these days I feel two genera are missing. The aforementioned observational nature writing, although Stephen Moss, who I know from our Natural History Unit days, does a worthy job here, and a humorous book on wildlife. Now there's an idea?

But, what I can say, with some certainty, is that I have been reading a lot of natural history publications this year. The ultimate decision is not in my gift. As a foot soldier, my involvement is the heavy lift. And I must say, even at speed, I'm enjoying it enormously.

The latest addition to the growing pile.

Richard Jefferies Award for nature writing - www.richardjefferiessociety.org/award/

A Falling Emotion : Simply Rain

 

A wet Northumberland National Park, viewed from our house in Harbottle.

I walked through the woods. Above, the high canopy drenched by September rain, below, little fell on me, though underfoot the soil quietly yielded to my step, a sensation I'd not experienced for many a month. These woods were redolent, an atomised perfume of emerald moss, of burnt sienna earth, of invisible mycelium. I wandered without purpose or direction until arrested in my reverie; there on the floor, glistening as if a shining beacon, a tree stump enveloped by coral fungus irradiating the most luxurious of orange in the half light.

That encounter was during an impromptu walk in East Harptree woods in the Mendip Hills in Somerset, having arranged to meet a friend for what was described as an amble with cake and a coffee. It has been so far well documented that 2026 has been the warmest, and possibly the driest, summer for decades. After over three months of dry weather here in the South West, the arrival of rain a few weeks ago was both unfamiliar and welcome. Soil remained iron-hard after those initial showers, but here, last weekend, high up on the Mendip ridge, after a few unsettled days, the soil was finally beginning to compress under my weight. Subtle, welcome and above all something to celebrate.

The change has been rapid. For months, I, along with most of the population of England and Wales, woke to strong sunlight, warm mornings, hot afternoons, nighttime too warm to sleep, with the prospect of the same tomorrow, the next day, and the next. And then, it rained. Referencing my diary, I noted 'It rained overnight. Don't get too excited as it was just enough to moisten a postage stamp.' It was the 18th of August. A few half-hearted showers arrived over the following days, but persistent rain only began on August 27th. 'It poured overnight. That is the second night running that we have had heavy rain, yet by morning you'd be fooled into thinking no rain had fallen, save a tell-tale dampness on the lawn'. Therefore, walking woods in the Mendip's during the steady rain of Sunday, September 13th, was a delicious novelty.

It was a meeting of literary minds which prompted me to mull over what rain actually means to me. I attended an Edward Thomas Fellowship walk two Sundays ago, bizarrely, in terms of my present thoughts, taking place on a gloriously warm and clear blue sky day. Thomas wrote a number of pieces about rain. One, simply titled Rain, poignantly contemplates mortality during WW1. However, in 1914 he wrote After Rain, recalling a sunrise illuminating a rain-drenched Hampshire hanger in winter; the poem begins,

The rain of a night and a day and a night

Stops at the light

Of this pale choked day. The peering sun

Sees what has been done.

I absolutely understand this sense of ending and beginning only too well. Love it or hate it, rain has that ability to reflect the mood, to enhance the scene. I've experienced that emotional uplift rain has given me since childhood. There is often a clarity created over a landscape when rain finally ends and, if lucky, the sun emerges, a sentiment Thomas brings to the end of the poem:

And on each twig of every tree in the dell

Uncountable

Crystals both dark and bright of the the rain

That begins again.

For me, with the all too logical background of a science graduate, rainfall is merely the rules of chemistry. I know it is simply two chemicals combining to produce water, add a little meteorology, the evapotranspiration and the water cycle of schooldays, but then therein lies the unfathomable kaleidoscope of emotional connection which has captivated me since childhood. It is the sound above all else which I enjoy, or is it the sight? Samuel Taylor Coleridge captured what I am trying to say in one of his notebooks. On October 21st 1803 he wrote:

    'Friday Morning. – A drisling Rain. Heavy masses of shapeless Vapour upon the mountains [O the perpetual Forms of Borrodale!] yet it is no unbroken Tale of dull Sadness...  a gleam of softest light, that brought out the rich hues of the late Autumn… the Birds are singing in the tender Rain as if it were the Rain of April, & the decaying Foliage were Flowers & Blossoms.'

A Romantic Poet view of rain indeed. Yet, how many times have I myself observed 'Heavy masses of shapeless Vapour upon the mountains'. Living for over three decades in Somerset, mountains are distant, but still, if I travel to an upland area, I am transfixed by those scudding clouds which caress the tops, often travelling quickly uphill through a gulley propelled by up-draught air. Technically, this is known as orographic lift, the clouds forming when moist air rises and the dew point is reached. But emotionally, these are fascinating connections to nature.

I experienced this only a few days ago on the Quantock Hills. Walking steadily upwards from the lower slopes, the views towards Exmoor were far-reaching and spectacular. Before long, gossamer clouds began to chase my route. Long before reaching the trig-point at the summit, I'd entered thick cloud, visibility reduced to a mere metre or two, everything, including me, coated in a fine confetti of mist. Hundreds of cobweb hammocks, now visible, glistened amongst yellow gorse flowers, strange disconnected sounds reached me, a raven, a stonechat. Neither seen. A distant steam train whistle shrilled its passage. Everyday life below, yet, on this ridge, I felt alone, abandoned, but intimately connected to this mass of vapour swirling quickly around me. Low cloud is, of course, not rain, not the rain we think of, the energy of condensation overruled by the pull of gravity.

Rain seemed to dominate my childhood. My mother bought a static caravan near Rothbury in Northumberland in 1971. Our very first night sleeping there was the eve of my seventh birthday, and we woke to rain. It rained a lot there. To this day, if I hear the percussion of rain on a metal roof, I'm instantly transported back to sleeping in our tin box. I was a self-contained only-child and allowed to free-roam the surrounding countryside. I would walk the banks of the river Coquet in all weathers, but it was the wet weather which excited my senses. Raindrops on grass could be flicked into the air as I passed. Few people ventured out during the rain, I was alone in nature, I was happy.

Much later, when at their lowest population ebb, I spent a couple of years surveying otter activity along the Coquet for the then Nature Conservancy Council. And, while I never saw the animal here, only signs (I had to travel to Skye for views of otter), memorable days were spent watching wildlife, often at dawn and dusk, often in rain. Here, without realising, I absorbed the knowledge of the sound of rain. Heavy rain on a sycamore leaf has a sound altogether different to heavy rain on the water. Light rain dampens the soundscape. Rainfall, scurrying wind chased across the landscape, has a sound altogether different to incessant drisling, as Coleridge called it. Summer rain is different, often subtler and short-lived, to winter rain with its harsh symphony and darkening sky. 

Summer rain can be cruel.  At fifteen, I spent my six-week school summer holiday working on a hill farm near Glanton in Northumberland. I was due to move there as a student the following June. It was a wet year and, try as we might, the hay crop could not be brought in dry. I can still hear the sound of mini-waterfalls cascading from the broken gutters of the barns, down into pools of water below. Everywhere was wet, yet, in an odd way, I loved it, possibly as, at that age, this was simply one big adventurous step in my chosen career, and not the anguish of a farmer surveying a ruined hay crop. And still, nearly fifty years later, I enjoy rain. 

Only this week, unable to sleep, did I sit in the conservatory at night listening to the sound made by rain falling in the garden. Hopefully, the hedgehog discovered that same day asleep in our compost heap, woke to rain and a smorgasbord of slugs that night.

I enjoy walking in it too. A few years ago, I took myself for a Sunday walk along a lane during heavy rain, well protected by my favourite Barbour coat and hat. A Land Rover pulled up, one of the local farmers offering me a lift to 'get out of this horrendous rain'. I declined his offer, stating I was enjoying the experience. I well remember his quizzical look as he closed the door and drove off into the murk. Penny for his thoughts?

But what of rainstorms? These high-energy fleeting moments of deluge are fascinating to watch, to experience, to read about. I've long admired Thomas Hardy. His description of the Wessex hinterland resonated with me as a teenager, and it has never left me. Hardy provided the perfect metaphor of the destructive powers of a summer storm in the heart of his heroine in his book Far From the Madding Crowd. Firstly, as steadfast unrequited Gabriel Oak noticed, a storm approached unprotected ricks during Bathsheba's wedding night. 'He was disturbed in his meditation by a grating noise from the coach-house. It was the vane on the roof turning round, and this change in the wind was the signal for a disastrous rain.' Oak having thus saved the harvest causes Bathsheba to reflect on her choice of husband. Later, that same husband, Sargent Troy, having rejected Bathsheba, despairs over the destruction of his true-love, Fanny Robins' grave, by rainwater falling seventy feet from the church tower. 'The persistent torrent from the gurgoyle's jaws directed all its vengeance into the grave. The rich tawny mould was stirred into motion, and boiled like chocolate. The water accumulated and washed deeper down, and the roar of the pool thus formed spread into the night as the head and chief among other noises of the kind created by the deluging rain.'

Summer thunderstorms seem less present in Somerset than of late. I so enjoy that feeling of tempestuous wind, noticed by Gabriel Oak, which often chaotically precedes the deluge, which when it arrives can be deafening, and if falling on parched summer earth accompanied by a unique aroma I struggle to describe, earth mixed with the scent of new lain tarmacadam almost suffices. One of the people I met at the Edward Thomas walk was Roz Brady. I've been reading some of her exquisitely crafted nature writing on her website. She writes outdoors and beautifully describes in Pudsham Meadow through the Seasons – A Wild Writing year (1), a storm blowing over Widecombe... winnowing summer's growth and ushering in a landscape of winter. 

All of which reminds me that while I have been writing this, I can hear steady rain falling once again. Writing about rain is one thing, but while it lasts, like Thomas, like Hardy, like Coleridge, like Roz Brady, I need to get out there and experience... Rain!

Dorset, January 2026

(1) : Roz Brady website : www.rozbrady.com

Best Intentions

 

 

We have reached Autumn. It is raining. I'm standing next to a stone - Triscombe Stone high in the Quantock Hills. The date; Wednesday, September 2nd. It is the first time I have needed to wear waterproofs since mid May. What a summer!!

 

The incessant heat over recent months curtailed my project to visit all of Dorset Wildlife Trust's nature reserves in a twelvemonth. That, and an unbelievably busy summer. Thus, with the project amended to 'I shall visit all these reserves in all good time' I'm back to general blogging. 

 

What isn't obvious in that image above was the near zero visibility on the highest point of the Quantocks - Will's Neck. And wind. And rain. That weather came as quite a shock after months of dry, sun drenched days.

 

 

 

I'd come up here with Mrs Wessex Reiver to recce a walk due to take place the following Sunday. I wasn't leading it, that was being expertly managed by the Edward Thomas Fellowship. But, despite visiting this Natural Landscape regularly, this end of the Quantocks is lessser known to me. I'd heard the views were stunning. I'll take their word for it.

 

 

 

However, Sunday arrived, accompanied by warm sunshine. And views. They are quite something. Thirty or so people took part in this organised morning walk with readings from Edward Thomas's canon of prose and poetry. Followed by lunch at the Rising Sun in West Bagborough. Later, myself and another lady ascended nearby Cotherstone Hill, destination point of Thomas's 'Grave of Winter' from his book In Pursuit of Spring. For both of us this was a first, and for me I wondered why I'd never visited this hill before. On that clear day we could see for tens of miles in every direction, our arrival heralded by a pair of ravens playfully sky-writing their own poetry in the keen 'Islands of England' updraft.

 

 

 

 It was a perfect ending to a wonderful day. Summer has ended, yet the creative energy to write is returning accompanying the shorter day length. I do enjoy long summer days, less so the heat of 2026.