During the early 1970s Richard Mabey explored crumbling city docks and overgrown bomb-sites, navigated inner city canals and car parks, and discovered there was scarcely a nook in our urban landscape incapable of supporting life. The Unofficial Countryside is a timely reminder of how nature flourishes against the odds, surviving in the most obscure and surprising places. First published 1973 by William Collins Sons & Co.

'This is, in the most literal sense, a triumphant book. ' THE TIMES Under the banner of progress, urban and suburban development is fast wiping out our rural heritage. Yet Nature is adapting to even the worst of Man's excesses, and in this brilliant book Richard Mabey reveals the astonishing rich world of animal and plant life surviving and often thriving among docklands, railways, factories and canals. From orchids growing in abandoned cars to kestrels over Kensington, this is Britain's UNOFFICIAL COUNTRYSIDE. 'Every once in a while I get the intense pleasure of opening a book and finding it an entirely new way of looking at things. Such a book is Mr Mabey's. . . Truly remarkable. ' DAILY EXPRESS 'Mr Mabey's book is one that should hearten those who feel their surroundings are too mundane and 'spoiled' to provide sanctuary for wildlife. ' COUNTRYSIDE

Richard Mabey is the author of numerous books on Britain's ecology, including the best-selling Flora Britannica and the Whitbread Prize-winning Gilbert White (Virginia).

“A Shakespearean comedy of misaligned lovers” set in the modern English countryside by a Man Booker Prize winner (Publishers Weekly). Hugh Peronett’s life is tinged with regret: the regret of never following his passions and losing the one woman he loved. Twenty-five years ago, he ended an affair with Emma Sands, a detective novelist who had stolen his heart, to be with his wife, Fanny. Now, Fanny is gone, and both Hugh and his grown son, Randall, find themselves at a crossroads of passion and righteousness. As Hugh, Emma, Randall, Randall’s wife, Randall’s mistress, and several others are caught in a dance of romance and rejection in bucolic rural England, they will discover the true meanings of love, companionship, and desire. From the acclaimed author of The Sea, The Sea, An Unofficial Rose is a novel of wit, sorrow and an unparalleled psychological insight.

Colin Elford's A Year in the Woods is an enthralling journey into the heart of the English countryside - with a preamble by Craig Taylor. Colin Elford spends his days alone - alone but for the deer, the squirrels, the rabbits, the birds, and the many other creatures inhabiting the woods. From the crisp cold of January, through the promise of spring and the heat of summer, and then into damp autumn and the chill winds of winter, we accompany the forest-ranger as he goes about his work - stalking in the early morning darkness, putting an injured fallow buck out of its misery, watching stoats kill a hare, observing owls, and simply being a part of the outdoors. Colin Elford immerses himself in the richly diverse and unique landscapes of Britain, existing in rhythm with natural environments. For fans of Robert Macfarlane's Landmarks, Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk orJames Rebanks' A Shepherd's Life, Colin's rare and uplifiting journey will unveil the true nature and beauty of Britain's countryside. 'This is nature for real . . . Elford describes woodland wonders in short paragraphs of luminous intensity' Daily Mail 'A poetic insight in the world of hidden Nature' Countryman 'Stalking sharpens the senses and there is an almost hallucinatory clarity to Elford's writing' Observer 'Refreshingly unsentimental. Contains some wonderful descriptions and sentences which are so profound they demand a second reading' Sunday Express Colin Elford is a forest ranger on the Dorset/Wiltshire border. Craig Taylor is the author of Return to Akenfield and One Million Tiny Plays About Britain and the editor of the magazine Five Dials.

After the Ruins uses both official and unofficial records to explore a relatively ignored aspect of recent rural history: how the fields, farms, villages and market towns of Northern France were restored during the 1920s in the aftermath of the Great War. The book contains illustrations and many detailed maps and makes use of both official reports and unofficial critical commentaries.

Weeds survive, entombed in the soil, for centuries. They are as persistent and pervasive as myths. They ride out ice ages, agricultural revolutions, global wars. They mark the tracks of human movements across continents as indelibly as languages. Yet to humans they are the scourge of our gardens, saboteurs of our best-laid plans. They rob crops of nourishment, ruin the exquisite visions of garden designers, and make unpleasant and impenetrable hiding places for urban ne'er-do-wells. Weeds can be destructive and troubling, but they can also be beautiful, and they are the prototypes of most of the plants that keep us alive. Humans have grappled with their paradox for thousands of years, and with characteristic verve and lyricism, Richard Mabey uncovers some of the deeper cultural reasons behind the attitudes we have to such a huge section of the plant world.

The wilderness is much closer than you think. Passed through, negotiated, unnamed, unacknowledged: the edgelands - those familiar yet ignored spaces which are neither city nor countryside - have become the great wild places on our doorsteps. In the same way the Romantic writers taught us to look at hills, lakes and rivers, poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts write about mobile masts and gravel pits, business parks and landfill sites, taking the reader on a journey to marvel at these richly mysterious, forgotten regions in our midst. Edgelands forms a critique of what we value as 'wild', and allows our allotments, railways, motorways, wasteland and water a presence in the world, and a strange beauty all of their own.

In 1920 a young man, Walter Murray, spent a year in a derelict cottage, Copsford, working in lonely countryside among the wild animals and birds, with only a dog, Floss, for companionship. From the beginning, Murray has to fight not only the rats that infest his inhospitable house, and the elements outside, but also a loneliness that he finds soul-shatteringly oppressive. But Murray comes to delight in his simple life, despite its deprivations. Above all, he appreciates the wildlife he experiences in meadow and woodland, the animals and insects, birds and butterflies. And he comes to a deeper understanding of plants and trees, the sun, wind, rain, frost and snow. Copsford is an under-appreciated classic of the English countryside, delighting not only in flora and fauna, but in scent, colour, sound and movement. In beautiful and sensitive prose Murray expresses a vivid depth of feeling for nature that makes Copsford a tour de force of nature mysticism. This new edition also contains Murray's essay, 'Voices of Trees', and an Introduction by R.B. Russell

There is a Britain that exists outside of the official histories and guidebooks - places that lie on the margins, left behind. This is the Britain of industrial estates, and tower blocks, of motorway service stations and haunted council houses, of roundabouts and flyovers. Places where modern life speeds past but where people and stories nevertheless collect. Places where human dramas play out: stories of love, violence, fear, boredom and artistic expression. Places of ghost sightings, first kisses, experiments with drugs, refuges for the homeless, hangouts for the outcasts. Struck by the power of these stories and experiences, Gareth Rees set out to explore these spaces and the essential part they have played in the history and geography of our isles. Though neglected and forgotten, they can be as powerfully influential in our lives, and imaginations, as any picture postcard tourist destination. Welcome to Unofficial Britain, a personal and occasionally fevered journey along the edges of a landscape brimming with magic and mystery, tragedy and myth; a story of Britain that gets cut from the narrative; a map of the cracks in the urban façade where unexpected life can flourish.