A Year with Gilbert White

'Uglow makes us feel the life beyond the facts.' GUARDIAN
'Few can match Uglow's skill at conjuring up a scene, or illuminating a character.' SUNDAY TIMES
'Uglow's style is supremely elegant and often amusingly bathetic, her researches exhaustive but lightly worn.' FINANCIAL TIMES

From one of the most enquiring and celebrated biographers - a glimpse into the life and mind of a pioneering naturalist.

You are more able to see with your own Eyes than any Man I know

In 1781, Gilbert White was a country curate, living in the Hampshire village he had known all his life. Fascinated by the fauna, flora and people around him, he kept journals for many years, and was now halfway to completing his path-breaking The Natural History of Selborne. No one had written like this before, with such close observation, humour, and sympathy: his spellbinding book has remained in print, treasured by generations of readers, since 1789.

Jenny Uglow illuminates this quirky, warm-hearted man, 'the father of ecology', by following a single year in his Naturalist's Journal. As his diary jumps from topic to topic, she follows Gilbert White from frost to summer drought, from the migration of birds to the sex lives of snails and the coming of harvest. Fresh, alive and original, A Year with Gilbert White invites us to see the natural world anew, with astonishment and wonder.