The Running Hare: The Secret Life of Farmland - Hardcover

John Lewis-Stempel is a writer and farmer. His many previous books include The Wild Life: A Year of Living on Wild Food, England: The Autobiography, Six Weeks: The Short and Gallant Life of the British Officer in the First World War and Meadowland, which won the Thwaites Wainwright Prize in 2015. John writes for Country Life and won the BMSE Columnist of the Year Award in 2016. He lives on the borders of England and Wales with his wife and two children.

"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 * "That John Lewis-Stempel is one of the best nature writers of his generation is undisputed." * Country Life * "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 * "A beautifully written paean to the countryside in all its rich diversity." -- PD Smith * Guardian * "A beautifully observed book, full of poetic descriptions. Brilliant and galvanising." * Sunday Express * "Lewis-Stempel is a fourth-generation farmer gifted with an extraordinary ability to write prose that soars and sings, like a skylark over unspoiled fields. This wonderful book (a worthy follow-up to his brilliant Meadowland) is a hymn in praise of enlightened farming methods which reject lethal chemicals and allow insects, birds and flowers to thrive, as once they did. As an experiment Lewis-Stempel rents an ordinary arable field (his own property is a hill farm) to plough and manage in the old-fashioned way, transforming it into a traditional wheatfield to attract wildlife. Even - he hopes - hares. The work is back-breaking but the rewards are sublime. Like the hares, Lewis-Stempel's words dance." * Bel Mooney, Daily Mail *