Unbound scoops debut book on ‘vital’ hedgerows by conservationist Negus 

Unbound has obtained the rights to Words From The Hedge: A Hedgelayer’s View of the Countryside by professional hedge layer and conservationist Richard Negus, slated to publish in March 2025.

John Mitchinson, publisher and co-founder of Unbound, secured UK and Commonwealth rights from Emma Shercliff of Laxfield Literary Associates. It is the first acquisition stemming from a scouting partnership between Unbound and editor Patrick Galbraith, who joined Unbound on a freelance basis in October and will deliver and edit four to six books a year on environmental and ecological themes.

With over 20 years of experience as a hedge layer and coppicer, Negus is passionate about the human skill and effort that go into hedgerows, often taken for granted despite being an emblem of the British countryside. Words From the Hedge elucidates the biodiversity hedges foster, as well as the men and women dealing with the everyday complexities of modern farming, conservation and countryside stewardship.

A debut author, Negus is features writer and country diarist for the Shooting Times and has written for the Suffolk Magazine, Suffolk & Norfolk Life, the Field and the Critic, and his BBC Radio Suffolk show “Letter From the Country” comes out monthly.

He said: “I wrote Words From The Hedge because I felt our much loved, yet misunderstood hedgerows needed a practical champion. The English hedgerow is the epitome of man-made ‘nature’ – you cannot rewild a hedge. These barriers of thorn, scrub and briar were planted, then laid, trimmed, cut or coppiced by man for agricultural purposes, but they also provide a remarkable source of food, habitat and safety for wildlife.  The book is written from my own first-hand experience as a professional hedgelayer. It has mud under its nails and thorns wedged painfully in its palm.”

Mitchinson said: “A lot of contemporary nature writing is self-projection – I prefer the stories of those people who work with the land; people who look and listen. Patrick Galbraith has a near mystical knack of finding the ones that can also write – like the astonishing Richard Negus. This is the best possible start to an exciting collaboration.”

Galbraith said: “There are lots of very good books on the countryside and conservation, but it’s rare to find a book this good, written by somebody who is out there, day in day out, making rural Britain a richer place where endangered wildlife has a chance to thrive. It is an immense privilege to be publishing a modern pastoral by a writer who knows how to use a billhook.”