Books

 

Wilding: How to bring wildlife back - an illustrated guide

Macmillan Children’s Books, 2024

Illustrated by Angela Harding

This beautiful illustrated gift book for young readers tells the story of Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell’s thrilling rewilding experiment at Knepp Estate in West Sussex. Illustrated with lino prints and watercolours by Angela Harding, the book explains how rewilding works and includes beautiful spreads featuring species that have returned and thrive including butterflies, bats, owls and beetles. There are accessible in-garden activities to 're-wild' your own spaces. The book encourages young readers to slow down and observe the natural world around them, and start to understand the connections between species and habitats, and the huge potential for life right on their doorstep.

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the Book of Wilding

Bloomsbury, 2023

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

The enormity of climate change and biodiversity loss can leave us feeling overwhelmed. How can an individual ever make a difference?

Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell know firsthand how spectacularly nature can bounce back if you give it the chance. And what comes is not just wildlife in super-abundance, but solutions to the other environmental crises we face.

The Book of Wilding is a handbook for how we can all help restore nature. It is ambitious, visionary and pragmatic. The book has grown out of Isabella and Charlie's mission to help rewild Britain, Europe and the rest of the world by sharing knowledge from their pioneering project at Knepp in Sussex. It is inspired by the requests they receive from people wanting to learn how to rewild everything from unprofitable farms, landed estates and rivers, to ponds, allotments, churchyards, urban parks, gardens, window boxes and public spaces.. The Book of Wilding has the answers.


'A deep, dazzling and indispensable guide to the most important task of all: the restoration of the living planet.' George Monbiot

Important and empowering' Benedict Cumberbatch

'Wonderful and urgent…Get this great guide and be inspired' Stephen Fry

'A handbook of hope ... Buy it, read it, start changing things right now'. Joanna Lumley

Wilding started a national conversation about restoring nature. The Book of Wilding offers us all the chance to get involved….Brilliantly readable, and eminently doable.’ Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

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When The Storks Came Home : Volume 2

Ivy Kids Eco, 2022

Illustrated by Alexandra Finkeldey

When The Storks Came Home is a charming, fictionalised retelling of the successful white stork reintroduction at the Knepp Estate.

The white stork is a UK native bird which was last year brought back from extinction. In this second picture book from bestselling author and globally significant conservationist Isabella Tree, we meet eight-year-old Beanie, who loves birds.

When she discovers that huge white storks used to live in her own village but were hunted to extinction in the UK 600 years ago, she is determined to find a way to bring them back. But reintroducing a vanished species is not so simple!

Storks can fly hundreds of miles, so releasing storks into the local countryside won't be enough to make them return and stay for good.

With the help of other villagers, Beanie hatches a plan... Beautiful illustrations help bring this powerful and important story to life, teaching children about conservation and their environment in an accessible way. Ivy Kids brings you beautiful, sustainably printed books to rewild your child, nurture creativity, and foster a deep connection with the living world.

This book would sit brilliantly on any nature-loving child's bookshelf.’ Chris Packham

‘Charms young readers with the power of rewilding.’ BBC Wildlife Magazine

‘I love this book.’ National Geographic Traveller

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when we went wild: volume 1

Ivy Kids Eco, 2021

Illustrated by Allira Tee

A story about how we can bring nature back.

Nancy and Jake are farmers. They raise their cows and pigs, and grow their crops with machines and chemicals.

That’s what all good farmers do, isn’t it? And yet, hardly any wildlife lives on their farm. The animals look sad. Even the trees look sad! One day, Nancy has an idea... what if they stopped doing all that, and just went WILD?

‘I love this book. It actually made me cry.' Pam Ayres

A gorgeous and true fable that will delight and inspire the next generation of young rewilders.’ Patrick Barkham

‘A charming inoculation of pure wild life - just what Dr. Earth ordered.’ Chris Packham

‘This book would sit brilliantly on any nature-loving child’s bookshelf.’ BBC Wildlife Magazine

‘Charms young readers with the power of rewilding.’ National Geographic Traveller

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Granta 153: second nature

Granta Publications, 2020

Never has there been a greater need for writers who can communicate about the environment in such clear, immediate and powerful ways, who can envisage the past as well as the future.

The knowledge is already out there. We just have to listen. The contributors to this issue all have a deep understanding of how nature works. Some are scientists; others, environmental journalists exploring the latest thinking about ecosystems and how to repair them; or poets, novelists and activists examining our responses to the current crisis. These stories will, I hope, be both enlightening and empowering, galvanising us to bring about change.

Isabella Tree, Guest Editor

Featuring essays by Patrick Barkham, Tim Flannery, Cal Flyn, Jessie Greengrass, Caoilinn Hughes, Amy Leach, Dino J. Martins, Rod Mason, Charles Massy, Rebecca Priestley, Callum Roberts, Judith D. Schwartz, Samanth Subramanian, Ken Thompson, Manari Ushigua, Sheila Watt-Cloutier and Adam Weymouth; photography by Xavi Bou and Merlin Sheldrake; poetry by Nate Duke and John Kinsella

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Meet the editor and contributors


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wilding - the return of nature to a british farm

Picador, 2018

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

Forced to accept that intensive farming on their land at Knepp in West Sussex was economically unsustainable, Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell took a spectacular leap of faith in 2000 and handed their 3,500 acres back to nature. Managed with minimal human intervention, and with herds of free-roaming animals driving the creation of new habitats, their rewilded land is now heaving with life. Rare species like turtle doves, nightingales, peregrine falcons and purple emperor butterflies are now breeding at Knepp and biodiversity has rocketed. 

The project has become a leading light for nature conservation in the UK, demonstrating how a hands-off, 'process-led' approach can restore land and wildlife in a dramatically short space of time.

Part gripping memoir, part fascinating account of the ecology of our countryside, Wilding is, above all, an inspiring story of hope. 

‘A passionately personal, robustly argued and uplifting book…One of the landmark ecological books of the decade.’ Sunday Times, ‘Books of the Year’

‘This must be the most inspirational nature book of the year…a narrative of conservation, courage, vision and miracles…Read this book and marvel.’ Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, ‘The Year’s Best Books on Nature’.

‘A hugely important addition to the literature of what can be done to restore soil and soul.’ Guardian

‘This joyful, poignant memoir tells the story of exhausted land becoming a rich ecosystem again and, in doing so, forces us to rethink farming.’ The Times, ‘Books of the Year’.

‘Excellent….Anyone who is interested in how we share the planet - what it looks like, what we eat, and what nature can teach us - should read this book.’ Sunday Times

‘The remarkable story of an astounding transformation.'  George Monbiot

‘A poignant, practical and moving story of how to fix our broken land, this should be conservation’s salvation; this should be its future; this is a new hope.’ Chris Packham

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the living goddess

Eland, 2015; Penguin India, 2015

In a small medieval palace on Kathmandu’s Durbar Square lives Nepal’s famous Living Goddess—a child chosen from the Buddhist caste of goldsmiths whose role is to watch over the country and protect its people.

To Nepalis she is the embodiment of Devi and for centuries the kings of Nepal have sought her blessing to rule. Legends swirl about her. But the facts remain shrouded in secrecy and closely guarded by the Living Goddess’s priests and caretakers. With unprecedented access, earned through her many years of research, Isabella Tree takes us deep into this hidden world. Deeply felt and compellingly told, The Living Goddess is a profound and extremely moving book.

‘An extraordinary story, beautifully told… nothing short of a revelation.’  William Dalrymple.

‘A unique insight into an astonishing tradition.’  Colin Thubron.

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sliced iguana

Hamish Hamilton, 2001; Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2007

Isabella travels into the heart of indigenous Mexico, amongst Mayan shamans in war-torn Chiapas, the peaceful lake-dwelling Purepecha of Michoacan, the powerful matriarchs of Pacific Juchitan and the princely Huichol peyoteros of the northern Sierra Madre.

She discovers a country of violence and tenderness, haunted by its brutal colonial and revolutionary past, with a love of life and a passion for fiesta – a country of extremes.

‘Wry, perceptive, intelligent and irreverently funny. The best of travel writing… Wonderfully successful.’  The Times Literary Supplement

‘Everything about Isabella Tree’s Sliced Iguana is as bright and fresh as a desert dawn.  Wide-eyed and sharp-penned, she explores not the backwater myth but a fast-evolving semi-continent… Tree mixes her erudition with ebullience.  Such a relief to meet a travel writer who actually has fun’.   The Independent

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islands in the clouds

Lonely Planet Journeys, 1996

Isabella Tree’s remarkable journey takes us to the heart of the remote and beautiful Highlands of Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya – one of the most extraordinary and dangerous regions on earth.  Comic and tragic by turns, Islands in the Clouds is her moving story of the Highland people and the changes transforming their world.

‘One of the most accomplished travel writers to appear on the horizon for many years …the dialogue is brilliant.’  Eric Newby.

‘Isabella Tree has an array of qualities that fit her for writing about wild and remote places:  high literacy, insight into alien societies, sympathy, courage, a lucid and colourful fluency, humour that makes many of her pages hilarious, the gift of making friends and an appropriate seriousness about the hazards and problems that can turn Cloud-Cuckoo-Land into an Inferno’.   Patrick Leigh Fermor

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the bird man

Barrie & Jenkins, 1991; Ebury Press, 2004

John Gould, author and publisher of some of the most magnificent works on birds ever created, was an ambitious and unscrupulous genius.  His stunning bird illustrations eclipsed even those of his great American rival, Audubon.

Isabella’s lively and evocative biography reveals a story of discovery, ambition and betrayal – touching on some of the greatest wonders of the Victorian era, from the arrival of the first giraffe in London to Gould’s exploration of Australia and his crucial role in Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

‘Thoroughly absorbing’  The New Yorker

‘A marvellous account’   The Sunday Telegraph

‘Biography at its best – well-researched and well-written, but also blessed with a mordant sense of humour that strangely complements the cranky figure of John Gould himself.'   George Plimpton

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