The Shepherd's Life: A Tale 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. These modern dispatches from an ancient landscape tell the story of a deep-rooted attachment to place, describing a way of life that is little noticed and yet has profoundly shaped this landscape. In evocative and lucid prose, James 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 world changes around them. Many stories are of people working desperately hard to leave a place. This is the story of someone trying desperately hard to stay.

About the Author :
James Rebanks is the Herdwick Shepherd, whose account of shepherding has a strong following on Twitter. His family have farmed in the same area for six hundred years. Bryan Dick is an English stage and screen actor, best known for playing Ernie Wise in Eric and Ernie, the BBC's BAFTA-winning biopic of Morecambe and Wise. He has appeared on television in his shows such as Wolf Hall, Midsomer Murders and Shameless. As a narrator, he is the voice of the Raven, Fisher, and Simpson series by Louise Brealey and Bryan Dick, as well as The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks.

Review :
'A remarkable achievement ... Utterly unsentimental, The Shepherd's Life is, nevertheless, profoundly moving.' 'A wonderfully detailed and candid account of a life that is both individual and typical of this role in rural society ... told with perfect pitch, in prose that flows as easily as speech, cleaves hungrily to the particular, and shifts without strain between the workaday and the imaginative.' 'Absorbing, often funny, and beautifully written ... a testament to the importance of maintaining a connection to the land.' 'An unforgettable survivor's book that raises important questions, not least about education ... one of the most truthful depictions of contemporary rural life that I have read.' 'Exceptional ... Rebanks's way with words is akin to that of that of an expert shearer with the clippers – swift, deft, skilled – and the resulting prose is lean, vivid, tough and handsome. I loved his book. It is one to restore faith in writing and the business of publishing – a story not like any other, told from the inside by someone whose passion for his subject lights up almost every sentence.'