The East Country: Almanac Tales of Valley and Shore

The East Country, like all accomplished works of close ecological focus, moves cleverly between the intensely local and the universal. Jules Pretty unites his two distinguished careers-as a biologist and as a writer in the broad fields of nature, place and landscape-to encourage `long attachments to the local' as profoundly valuable undertakings.

The East Country is a brave and visionary book. Jules Pretty's writing is clear and strong, and the questions he raises about our relationship with the natural world and our capacity to cultivate a real sense of place are of the greatest importance.

The East Country is a marvelous book. There is something mystical about it, coming perhaps from the sense of reverence that Jules Pretty accords the natural world. It gives the sense of a prose poem, a song of praise for a world that is vanishing.

Jules Pretty has created a new literary form within nature writing. `Murmuration Realism' might be the term that captures his technique of using words to create place-based shapes, patterns, and rhythms in the mind of a reader. Readers can dwell intimately in the time and spaces of a place they may never have actually seen. Concatenations of words and concepts take to the air like a thousand starlings, and Pretty orchestrates them so that they form organic unity and come alive. In the heartbeat of a full calendar year, he creates a phenology of place for us, yet, at the same time, we know it creates him. To be able to walk on the bridge between the objective and the subjective is a rare treat. Jules Pretty, in The East Country, gives you the opportunity to stand on that bridge and drink in the wonder of it all.

I'm in step with Prof Jules Pretty. Who wouldn't be, when he rightly recognises the link between a healthy natural world and good mental health in humans - and trumpets the message? Like him, I love getting outdoors to feel the sun (and rain) on my skin and notice the different rhythm. You could say I've bought the T-shirt along with the waterproof walking boots and warm coat.

His celebration of the landscape incorporates memoir and poetry, natural history and spiritual reflection, but also a critique of where current policies are leading us. `Nature will carry on regardless,' he suggest. `It is just that we might not.'