James Rebanks runs a family-owned farm in the Lake District in northern England. A graduate of Oxford University, James works as an expert advisor to UNESCO on sustainable tourism. He uses his popular Twitter feed – @herdyshepherd1 – to share updates on the shepherding year. The Shepherd’s Life is his first book
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Books
The Shepherd’s Life: A People’s History 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.
The Illustrated Herdwick Shepherd
I am the luckiest man alive, because I get to live and work in the most beautiful place on earth: Matterdale in the English Lake District. When I was a child we didn’t really go anywhere, except a week in the Isle of Man when I was about ten years old, and I never left Britain until I was twenty. Even now, years later, the best bit of any travelling is coming home. Bringing us into the world of shepherd’s baking competitions, sheep shows and moments out on the fell watching the sheep run away home, James Rebanks interweaves thoughts and reflections on the art of shepherding with his photographs of the valley, people and animals that make up the daily life of the fells. A life lived by the three hundred surviving fell farming families, this is a book of photos and words filled with reverence and love.
English Pastoral: An Inheritance
Review: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/03/english-pastoral-by-james-rebanks-review-how-to-look-after-the-land
The Shepard’s Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape
Some people’s lives are entirely their own creations. James Rebanks’ isn’t. In evocative and lucid prose, Rebanks takes us through a shepherd’s year, offering a unique account of rural life and a fundamental connection with the land that most of us have lost. It is a story of working lives, the people around him, his childhood, his parents and grandparents, a people who exist and endure even as the culture-of the English Lake District, and of farming-changes around them. Many memoirs are of people working desperately hard to leave a place. This is the story of someone trying desperately hard to stay.
The Shepherd’s View
From The New York Times bestselling author of The Shepherd’s Life, a breathtaking book of photography and wisdom that chronicles an ancient way of living that deeply resonates in our modern world. With over eighty full color photographs The English Lake District comes into full focus: the sheep competitions of the spring, the sweeping pastures of the summer, beloved sheep dogs in the fall and the harsh snows of winter. A celebration of a way of life still very much alive, The Shepherd’s View is a poetic, and artistic achievement from one of England’s most celebrated new voices. : Modern Photographs from an Ancient Landscape
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Articles
Literary shepherd James Rebanks on family and the fight against over-farming [18.09.2020]
Treasure our rural paradise… before it’s forever lost: His glorious shepherd’s memoir enchanted thousands. In this magical sequel, JAMES REBANKS mourns the end of his father’s farming ways – but says we can still revel in Britain’s bucolic heritage [26.08.2020]
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8667997/In-magical-sequel-JAMES-REBANKS-mourns-end-fathers-farming-ways.html
The Tweeting of the Lambs: A Day in the Life of a Modern Shepherd [2018]
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BBC Hardtalk – Shepherd James Rebanks is an advocate for a better kind of farming that is more sustainable and environmentally responsible. But are his ideas compatible with affordable food?https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszc2f
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