Rebirding flies off with Richard Jefferies Society Literary Prize

Benedict Macdonald's Rebirding: Rewilding Britain and its Birds (Pelagic Publishing) has won the Richard Jefferies Society Prize and the White Horse Book Shop's Literary Prize for Best Nature Book published in 2019. 

The prize of £1,000 is awarded annually to the publication which is considered the most outstanding nature writing. The judges agreed that out of the six shortlisted books, Macdonald's best met the criteria of reflecting themes of topics broadly consistent with Jefferies' countryside books. 

The panel felt that Rebirding not only "highlights how modern industrialised agriculture and land management practices have depleted biodiversity and bird life in Britain" but that the book also "challenges the efficacy of some of the work of conservation organisations, insisting that small-scale successes with some endangered species of birds will never result in sufficiently large populations to be viable, and that there is an urgent need for a network of links between conservation areas across the country". 

Professor Barry Sloan, chair of the judging panel, commented: "Rebirding impressed the judges by its ambition and scope and by the extensive research which underpins the book’s lively and thought-provoking engagement with some of the key environmental issues in the UK and their impact on our wildlife – and especially on bird life. You may not agree with all of Benedict Macdonald’s ideas and arguments, but his book is a passionate, informed and important intervention in one of the most pressing concerns of our time, and it deserves serious attention and a wide readership"

Macdonald said: "My wise grandfather gave me a copy of Jefferies’ Wild Life in a Southern County when I was eight years old. Today I am humbled beyond measure to have won this literary prize. This one’s for you, Fred Giltinan."

Macdonald's book triumphed on a shortlist also including Adele Brand's The Hidden World of the Fox (William Collins), David Barrie's Incredible Journeys (Hodder & Stoughton), Jim Crumley's The Nature of Spring (Saraband), Simon Barnes' On the Marsh (Simon & Schuster) and Jeremy Purseglove's Working with Nature (Profile Books).