My book of the year. Meadowland is a seasonal journey of discovery, a pilgrimage that nurtures the soul and gives meaning to life; all life. Each beautifully crafted sentence provides a stepping-stone to absorb and understand the land, with the writer’s lyrical voice acting as guide and trusty staff as well as illuminating the mind’s eye with wonderful imagery and perceptive literary devices.

Fascinating ... Books have been written about entire countries that contain a less interesting cast of characters than Lewis-Stempel's account of one field on the edge of Wales. Foxes, red kites and voles become as intricately shaded as characters in an HBO drama, the readers' sympathies swinging between them and their adversaries. Not every English meadow contains such a vast variety of wildlife as Lewis-Stempel's, and he's lucky to live somewhere so unspoilt, but his immense, patient powers of observation – along with a flair for the anthropomorphic – mean he is able to offer a portrait of animal life that's rare in its colour and drama.

Lewis-Stempel's eye for detail and the poetic imagery of sentences such as "Behind me the river shouts with the abandon of a football crowd" or "Someone has stirred the clouds into milk pudding" are reminiscent of the late, brilliant Roger Deakin...

There is barely a creature in Meadowland that I didn't learn at least one interesting new fact about (the occasional tendency of badgers to hold funerals for one another is a particular favourite).

Engaging, closely-observed and beautiful ... this author’s deep love of the world around him is as inspiring as it is entertaining. This wonderful book ... is most of all, a moving hymn of gratitude from a man so rooted, so full of joy that he likens his land to a cathedral and knows that: ‘To stand alone in a field in England and listen to the morning chorus of the birds is to remember why life is precious'.

[JLS] has a sharp eye, a fluent pen and that omnivorous, innocently English curiosity about wild creatures... There are lyrical moments aplenty but this is not the cloying 'regardez-moi maman' nature writing. JLS's tone is level, involved, humorous and even self-deprecating... This is a rich, interesting book, generously studded with raisins of curious information.

My holiday reading: [John Lewis-Stempel] knows not only all about the different kinds of life in such a place and how they all fit together, but can also write so vividly.

Lively elegant prose. [John Lewis-Stempel's] thoughtful, discursive, often humorous and always enjoyable narrative conveys a vital message.

A beautifully written and insightful diary with fascinating historical and literary diversions.

This very personal love letter to the land is steeped in knowledge of the local flora, fauna and history, and grounded by the realities of farming. Precise and poetic descriptions are rooted in the context of conservation issues and heritage – names are often traced to their Anglo-Saxon or Celtic roots. Neither sentimental rhapsody nor environmental study, although containing elements of both, this is an insightful meditation on our relationship with nature, and on nature writing itself.

This is a great book – a magnificent love letter to the natural world, full of wisdom and experience, written with wit, poetry and love. It is, in fact, one of the best five books I have ever had the privilege to read. I want to scream from the rooftops: buy it, give it, read it.

An intimate, month-by-month observation of the flora and fauna of an English meadow; its foxes, badgers, rabbits, skylarks, cowslips. It's written in exquisite prose.

A careful exploration of the rich cultural history of this priceless British habitat … a worthy tribute to a fragile ecosystem.

Once you become immersed in [John Lewis-Stempel's] joyful encounters with a host of wild flowers and creatures in his patch of Herefordshire, it's hard not to want to spend time - a lifetime at least - in his meadow.

This beautiful panegyric to the traditional English hay meadow is an intimate yet surprisingly open book. Lewis-Stempel has created a deeply personal work, infused with natural history and ancient lores, yet entwined with the fabric of the modern day.

A poet's pen

Intelligent, delightful, cultured and informative. It's a very good read and I feel I will come back to it each year ...Recommend this book very strongly ...The writing is excellent and the subject is engaging. Do buy this book. Read and weep for what we have lost.

Absolutely inspiring and beautiful… I would recommend it to anyone

An enchanting evocation of one of man's magical rural oases.

Having grown up in rural Hertfordshire, I’m immediately drawn to this wonderful account of the seasons and found many connections with the wildlife in London’s eight Royal Parks.

An wonderful, intimate recording of the passing months and seasons of an ancient meadow... It encourages us to cherish, to look and to experience nature more closely.

A vivid day-by-day account of the wild things he witnesses ... [with] intimate scenes [that] dot energetically between human and non-human tragedy and comedy. The backdrop - although right at the book's felt heart - is Mr Lewis-Stempel's attempt to gain the kind of imaginative lift-off that has been sought by every Arcadian dreamer since pastoral literature began.

It's the vignettes that suck us in: how flirtatious wrens court in the spring and how the curlew lands 20 yards from its nest ... It's enough to make any reader want their own meadowland.

[John Lewis-Stempel's] descriptions are intimate and lyrical, giving an overwhelming impression of an author who cares deeply for the landscape in which he finds himself ... We are in a golden age of nature writing, and John Lewis-Stempel [is] among its finest exponents.

Seen through the eyes and pen of a writer engaged in wresting a living from the land, yet also alert to the silent signs of the seasons... paints a vivid picture.

Quietly ecstatic prose

Meadowlands by John Lewis-Stempel caught me by surprise and had me spellbound. I couldn’t put it down when I read it on holiday and it has helped me to see the world anew – looking for details and looking for nature around you.

My book of 2014: A wonderfully evocative and restful read

Of my best books of 2014, amongst some increasingly austere and dull nature writing, one book shone out for its unaffected simplicity and grace: Meadowland: The Private Life Of An English Field by John Lewis-Stempel

Absolutely magical..a marvellous read

Best book about plants and gardening of 2015

Runner up Booklife Book of the Year: Nature writing at its finest.

A year in the life of a Herefordshire meadow – beautifully written, verging on poetic.

A careful exploration of the rich cultural history of this priceless British habitat.

Lewis-Stempel's exquisite prose are bolstered by a vast breadth of knowledge and a fierce admiration of his subject. This is beautiful love letter to the natural world and a must-read!

Ambitious and invigorating

Harari’s book is important reading for serious-minded, self-reflective sapiens

Brilliantly done and endlessly fascinating

Vast and intricate... Engaging and informative

A thrilling account of humankind’s extraordinary history

The book is maddeningly opinionated and insanely ambitious. It is also compulsively readable and impossibly learned. It is one of the best accounts by a Homo sapiens of the unlikely story of our violent, accomplished species

An enthusiastic and confident narrative that is relentlessly interesting from the first word to the last

The most exciting book I’ve read this year

One of the most talked about non-fiction bestsellers of the year... Harari is one of the very few thinkers around who’s really looking at what’s happening now. Sapiens is his attempt to tell the story of the past to understand the present: the great technological advances that we are all living through now

Eloquent and provocative

A headclutchingly provocative account of our species from the Stone Age to the present... Stunningly ambitious and compellingly written. They call it macro-history. They’re right.

Fascinating

Unforgettably vivid language. I urge everyone to read it

Contains a remarkable piece of information on almost every page and reminds us that we should be grateful to be human.

Thought-provoking

I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who’s interested in the history and future of our species.

Read with an open mind and you might look at life in a whole new way.

A fantastic book about how homo sapiens came to conquer the world

A dark and thrilling epic.

I have continued to be driven bonkers by my current obsession: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, an extraordinary tome that charts the plight of the planet’s most destructive species since the dawn of time: us. Every paragraph gives you pause for thought, as it catalogues how nuts human beings really are… It may be the best book I’ve ever read; it’s certainly fascinating.

This doesn’t make you feel clever; it makes you feel included. It’s written so brilliantly… He’s written about the human family as a family.

It's one of the best books I’ve read recently and gives an excellent overview of how our species has developed and helps us understand why and who we are today.

A sweeping account of the history of our species, written in vivid prose.

It rattles along, firing glitter-coated bullets of wisdom as it goes. If Carlsberg made professors, they’d have fashioned them thus. You’ll never have quite as much fun while learning so much.

Reading this wonderful book feels like looking at life down the bigger end of the telescope. Its scope – which incorporates the history of our species and the question of what the future may have in store – is so magisterial, one has an increasingly godlike feeling while reading it.

An absolute trove that everyone who wants to understand everything from human evolution to diet, religions and limited liability companies should read.

Opening up a controversial topic with spirit and thoroughness, Sapiens will challenge your preconceptions, provoke discussion and, most importantly, push you to think for yourself… Bold and provocative.

A brilliant, interdisciplinary account of the past and future of our species… Some of Harari’s most interesting points are the ways in which the fundamental, unchanging traits that make us human (emotions, desires) relate to the modern world. Essential reading for any liberal arts degree.

In the unlikely event you haven’t already read it and…fancy learning some cool new stuff in a fun way, I wholeheartedly recommend it to you.

It’s so intense that you have to read a bit then have a rest. It has brilliant passages, such as where he argues humans became enslaved by agriculture. Vivid and invigorating.

Every now and then a book comes along that tilts your perspective on the world. This internationally best-selling phenomenon is one of them.

Insightful, provocative and certainly gives you a sense of perspective

Shortly before the pandemic, I read Sapiens... It's not an exaggeration to say I've thought of it every day since

It succeeds through its eclectic scope, its readability, and its author’s willingness to offer ethical judgements

A book that leaves its reader full-hearted… moved and enriched by its humanity and accomplishment.

A fast read that won’t fail to move you.

John Updike said that every writer is simply unpacking their own bag, describing writing as a way to come to terms with one’s current and historical life experience. If that is the case Paul Kalanithi, in When Breath Becomes Air, is unpacking a very large bag indeed, and not just his own.

When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.

Far more than a beautifully written account of a life cut cruelly short: it is a meditation on living well.

[H]e writes with an eloquence that befits his love of the literary.

An eloquent meditation on our mortality, the brain, the meaning of life, fatherhood and the doctor-patient relationship, this powerful, inspirational book should appeal to readers who are enjoying watching BBC2’s current Hospital series. I couldn’t put this profoundly moving memoir down – but it is not for the squeamish or faint-hearted, and may scare hypochondriacs.

It’s not just that Kalanathi has a remarkable story to tell. The way he tells it is phenomenal… This is a superbly written and must-read autobiography – beautiful, poignant and thought-provoking.

He writes movingly about how to make sense of a life so suddenly interrupted and what makes life worth living even as it fades away. A beautiful book about the resilience of the human spirit.

Kalanithi’s candid yet artistic prose, peppered with medical terminology, conveys his life beautifully. We are taken on a journey from the nostalgic memories of his childhood in Arizona to his final days in the hospital bed… he raw and emotional portrayal of his pain and their family’s grief is not an easy read, but a compelling one.

A thoroughly enjoyable, epic read, When Breath Becomes Air should be at the top of everyone’s ‘to read’ list. Paul Kalanithi beautifully bridges the gaps between philosophy, science and literature in his memoir which depicts the reality of life lived in the face of death… Kalanithi writes sublimely, elegantly and honestly. His words are spun together as though with a golden thread, and all that he writes is from the heart. His admiration for the written word shines through and the mammoth task of composing his memoir, after receiving his diagnosis, is executed exquisitely… It is a novel filled with tenderness, heartbreak and bittersweet nostalgia. It is a novel containing power, strength and beauty. And it is a novel that will stay with you long after its cover has been closed.

Informative, emotive, honest and a stark look at the path one takes when life pulls the rug out from under you.

This book has stayed with me ever since I put it down. Absolutely extraordinary. This book is an example of how fragile and unfair life can be.

It was a really incredible read and I couldn’t recommend it more.

As a book detailing the insight into our own mortality, and the dedication of medical professionals who place their lives on hold to learn their craft, it’s fascinating. His accounts of coming face to face with cadavers – "donors" – and performing autopsies, his experiences with patients as he gave good and bad news, his mistakes as a surgeon which caused irreparable damage coupled with his success as a physician are an incredible insight into his life’s work… A melancholic read that I’d recommend to all student nurses, and anyone interested in reading the final thoughts of a doomed surgeon.

Poignant and life-affirming, it's a devastating must-read

Beautifully written... utterly heartbreaking and yet somehow life-affirming

The writing is beautiful and the whole book feels like a wondrous gift

At a time when the NHS and key workers are doing their utmost to make sure people are safe, this medical memoir is one that will make you realise how courageous and hard-working our medical staff really are... The moving and intimidate book brings readers on a valuable and gut-wrenching journey through the meaning of life, exposes universal truths surrounding terminal illnesses and highlights the fragile relationship between doctor and patient