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

Some 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.

“Two pages into The Shepherd’s Life, I was gripped. Twenty pages in, I was amazed. By its end, I knew I’d read an extraordinary book, at once political and beautiful – a major addition to the modern British literature of landscape, that can stand alongside Ronald Blythe’s classic Akenfield as a portrait of a place and its people as seen from within” – Robert Macfarlane

“A very good book” – Alan Bennett

“Affectionate, evocative, illuminating. A story of survival – of a flock, a landscape and a disappearing way of life. I love this book” – Nigel Slater, author of Toast and The Kitchen Diaries

“Bloody marvellous” – Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk