nature notes

Ever since I was a very little girl I have been madly in love with the English countryside. The memories of my childhood are threaded together with a deep emotional connection to the woods, fields, coast, rivers and gardens through which I ran and played.

I am lucky enough to have sensitive parents who not only love the British landscape and its wildlife but know an immense amount about it, and who were able to teach me as a child almost everything I wanted to know about its trees, plants, birds, animals, agriculture, geography, climate and history.

I also inherited from them my lifelong enjoyment of books and reading, and not surprisingly, one of my great loves is nature writing. I have always loved those little tucked-away paragraphs on the letters page of the newspaper about the arrival of geese on the Mawddach estuary and the first celandine in the Cotswolds, and my first introduction to this gentle genre was through the wonder of Ladybird Books, in particular What to Look for in Spring, What to Look for in Summer, What to Look for in Autumn and What to Look for in Winter. Much of what I know about the natural world was learnt from my threadbare copies of these four little titles by E.L. Grant-Watson and illustrated by C.F. Tunnicliffe, and many of the words and images will forever be engrained in my mind.


Sadly these books have gone missing from my shelves over the years, but I recently discovered that you can buy prints from all the Ladybird books here, and so for my main Christmas present this year I was allowed to choose eight pictures to frame. Despite their slight lack of definition in reproduction, still for me they wonderfully convey the seasonal beauty of the England of my childhood memories.


C.F. Tunnicliffe is one of my favourite artists, who in my opinion should be far better known and appreciated. Like many of my literary and artistic heroes he's not at all fashionable these days, but he illustrated many classic works and is probably most well-known for Henry Williamson's Tarka the Otter. His sensitivity of line and shadow is exquisite.

Another author whose work he often illustrated was the late great Alison Uttley, creator of Little Grey Rabbit and prolific writer of essays about the English countryside. I often get one of my Granny's old volumes down from the shelves for a bit of winter comfort reading.


She often writes about her own childhood memories and everything is tinged with a sense of magic and wonder.

My second best Christmas present this year was a long-promised copy of Susan Hill's The Magic Apple Tree, a collection of country notes from her cottage in Oxfordshire from my friend Anne, whose favourite book it is. I am reading it in very small doses to make it last.


In return I gave her a copy of another of my own favourites, A Year in Silverdale by Richard Norman, another beautifully written snapshot of a little-known part of England which happens to be one of my favourite places to go.