Richard Mabey

Richard Mabey
Born	20 February 1941 (1941-02-20)
Education	Rothesay School Berkhamsted Preparatory School Berkhamsted School
Alma mater	St. Catherine's College, University of Oxford
Occupation	Author
Television	Postcards from the Country
Awards	Whitbread Biography of the Year British Book Awards’ Illustrated Book of the Year Botanical Society of the British Isles’ President’s Award two Leverhulme Fellowships honorary doctorates from St Andrews and Essex universities

Richard Mabey (born 20 February 1941) is a naturalist and author.

He has been called by The Times 'Britain's greatest living nature writer'^{[citation needed]}. Among his acclaimed publications are Food for Free, The Unofficial Countryside and The Common Ground, as well as his study of the nightingale, Whistling in the Dark. His book about Gilbert White won the 1986 Whitbread Biography of the Year. Richard Mabey devised, researched and wrote the ground breaking bestseller Flora Britannica, which won the British Book Awards’ Illustrated Book of the Year and the Botanical Society of the British Isles’ President’s Award and was runner-up for the BP Natural World Book Prize.

Between 2000 and 2002 Mabey suffered with depression and his book Nature Cure, which describes his experiences and recovery in the context of man’s relationship with landscape and nature, was short-listed for three major literary awards, the Whitbread Biography of the Year, the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize for evoking the spirit of place and the J.R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography.

Richard Mabey contributes frequently to BBC radio. ‘The Scientist and the Romantic', a series of five essays in which he discussed his lifelong relationship with science and the natural environment, were broadcast on Radio 3 in 2009.

He also wrote and narrated the 1996 BBC television series Postcards from the Country, for whose eight, 40- minute episodes he was series producer, as well as being the producer- director on four. His books The Unofficial Countryside and The Flowering of Britain were also made into BBC TV series. He made films for the BBC on Kew Gardens and The Yorkshire Dales.

In the 1980s he sat on the UK government’s advisory body, the Nature Conservancy Council. He has been awarded two Leverhulme Fellowships, and honorary doctorates by St Andrews and Essex universities for his contributions to nature writing. He was appointed to the Civil List in 2008 for services to literature. He is a Director of the arts and conservation charity Common Ground, Vice-President of the Open Spaces Society and Patron of the John Clare Society.

Mabey has also written on countryside and art issues for The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Granta and Resurgence. A selection of these writings was compiled as the book Country Matters. He has written a personal column in BBC Wildlife magazine since 1984.

Education

Mabey was educated at three independent schools, all in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. The first was at Rothesay School, followed by Berkhamsted Preparatory School and then Berkhamsted School. He then went to St. Catherine's College at the University of Oxford where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Biography

After education at Oxford, Richard Mabey worked as a lecturer in Social Studies in Further Education, then as a Senior Editor at Penguin Books. He became a full-time writer in 1974. He spent most of his life among the beechwoods of the Chilterns. He now lives in Norfolk, in the Waveney Valley.

Portraits of Mabey

The National Portrait Gallery has a 1984 bromide print of Richard Mabey by Mark Gerson. Mabey agreed to sit for sculptor Jon Edgar in Norfolk during 2007, as part of The Environment Triptych (2008) along with heads of Mary Midgley and James Lovelock.

Works

Books

• Food for Free (Collins, 1972)
• The Unofficial Countryside, 1973
• Pollution Handbook (Penguin Books 1974)
• Roadside Wildlife Book, 1975
• Plants with a Purpose (Collins, 1977)
• Plants with a Purpose (Fontana 1979)
• The Common Ground (Hutchinson, 1980)
• The Flowering of Britain (Hutchinson, 1980)
• Back to the roots (with Francesca Greenoak; Arena, 1983)
• In a Green Shade (Hutchinson, 1983)
• The Frampton Flora, 1985
• Gilbert White (Ebury Press, 1986)
• The New Age Herbalist (w. Michael McIntyre; Prentice Hall 1988)
• The Flowering of Kew (Ebury Press; 1988)
• The Flowering of Britain: revised edition (Chatto and Windus, 1989)
• Home Country (Century, 1990)
• A Nature Journal (with illustrations by Clare Roberts; Chatto, 1991)
• The Book of Nightingales
• Country Matters
• The Flora of Hampshire (co-author)
• The Frampton Flora
• Landlocked, 1994
• Flora Britannica, 1996
• Mushrooms and Toadstools of Britain and Europe
• Plantcraft
• Whistling in the Dark: In Pursuit of the Nightingale, 1993
• The Wildwood (with Gareth Lovett Jones)
• Selected Writings, 1999
• Nature Cure (Chatto and Windus, 2005, ISBN 0-7011-7601-6)
• Fencing Paradise : Exploring the Gardens of Eden Eden Project Books, 2005 ISBN 1-903919-31-2
• Beechcombings. The Narratives of Trees, (2007) Chatto and Windus. London.
• The Full English Cassoulet, 2008
• The Barley Bird, 2010
• A Brush with Nature, 2010
• Weeds, 2010

Editions, Co-Authorship, Etc.

• Class (ed.), 1968
• The Natural History of Selborne (ed.), Penguin, 1977
• In Search of Food (with David Mabey)
• Cold Comforts, 1983
• Second Nature (ed.), 1984
• NHS Everyman (ed.), 1993
• Landscape with Figures: an anthology of Richard Jeffries (ed.), 1986-9
• Back to the Roots (with Francesca Greenoak), 1984
• Gardner’s Labyrinth (ed.)
• The Flowers of May (with Caroline May, illustrator; Collins and Brown, 1990)
• Secret Life of the New Forest (with Eric Ashby, photographer)
• The Oxford Book of Nature Writing, 1995
• The Yorkshire Dales (With landscape photographer Graham Nobles)
• Birds Britannica (with Mark Cocker), Chatto, 2005 [1]
• Lark Rise to Candleford (intro.), 2009
• Bugs Britannica (with Peter Marren), 2010
• The Garden of Weeds, 2010
• The Snow Leopard (intro.), 2010

Educational and Children’s

• Pop Process (Hutchinson 1969)
• Behind the Scene
• Food
• The Pollution Handbook
• Children in Primary School
• Street Flowers
• Oak and Co.

Editorship

• Gardener's Labyrinth (Thomas Hill, OUP, 1987)
• Second Nature - British artists, writers, record Nature of UK (Jonathan Cape, 1984)
• The Oxford Book Of Nature Writing (OUP, 1999)

Introduction

• The Tree: A Celebration of Our Living Skyline, edited by Peter Wood, David & Charles, 1993), ISBN 0-7153-9481-9
• An Exaltation Of Skylarks, compiled by Stewart Beer, SMH Books, (1995), ISBN 0-9512619-7-5

Articles

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• The terrible lesson of the bee orchid (The Guardian, 18 June 2005)
• ITV Video interview with Richard Mabey, November 2008
• Diary of a country woman (The Guardian, 13 December 2008)
• "The Hedge Kid" (Interview in The Guardian, 22 December 2007)
• Why We Must Learn to Love Weeds (The Wall Street Journal, 4 June 2011)

Films

• Richard Mabley's 2011 'Botanical Busk' tour of the London canals, commissioned by the Floating Cinema