Name: Katie Galvin's review of The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks
Item: The Shepherd's Life
Rating: 5
Author: Katie Galvin

James Rebanks

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 their routines: 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 history. 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.

A Tale of the Lake District

The Shepherd's Life

Sabine Delorme

A shepherd in the Lake District of northern England shares his way of life in this memoir about living and farming in a storied landscape.

Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape

Katie Galvin

I envy the author's love of his place. I was fascinated by the life of James Rebanks and his father and grandfather before him.

Terry Thomas

This is the most inexplicably un-put-downable book I have read in a while.

Potentially a boring idea - the life of a sheep-farmer in Somewhere Up North, England - Rebanks manages to sketch an unbelievably moving and thought-provoking picture of a life, and of lifetimes, spent in hard and meaningful toil. In passing, he reflects on many themes - on the education system, on the urban and rural divide, on the very different kind of intelligence of those who live by the land, on the satisfactions of hard physical labour connected to the earth, on an individual’s place in space and time, on genetics and breeding, on struggle and conflict, on parenthood, on responsibility, on honour. 

Much like James Herriot once wrote about his veterinary adventures in small-town England, Rebanks’ book does not have an arc. He simply captures brief non-linear vignettes from his life, a life lifted out of a long stream of similar lives before and after him. 

Conversations with many peers over the years have led me to believe that the life of a farmer holds a subtle, romantic call for those of us who toil away for someone else in soul-less cubicles. There is something about walking on grassy plains, on being part of the the cycle of planting and watching life grow under your fingers, about learning to read and respond to the moods of nature, about being in tune with the seasons and rhythms of life. 
However, that romanticized longing has little grounding in reality; to a large extent because there are far too few books by farmers or shepherds, that tells you the warts-and-all story of life on a farm. With a restrained candor, and awareness of his place in the circle of life (for lack of a better phrase), James Rebanks has written that book. This is a mature love letter to farming, to shepherding, to his father, to his children, to a way of life.

Highly, highly recommended.

Jason Porterfield

This may be the best and most honest book I've ever read about agriculture. Rebanks sets forth the pleasures and struggles of maintaining centuries-old farming practices and his family's connection to the land with grace, grit and humor. And there are collies.

Grace Emilia Machon

Life affirming, land affirming, wonder
I've never felt more in love with the landscape I have grown up in.

Mario Menti 

Florian Sotscheck 

Hannah Swithinbank

Shreya Rai 

Joshua Line

Natalie

From The New York Times bestselling author of The Shepherd’s Life, a breathtaking book of photography and wisdom that chronicles an ancient way of living that deeply resonates in our modern world. With over eighty full color photographs The English Lake District comes into full focus: the sheep competitions of the spring, the sweeping pastures of the summer, beloved sheep dogs in the fall and the harsh snows of winter. A celebration of a way of life still very much alive, The Shepherd’s View is a poetic, and artistic achievement from one of England’s most celebrated new voices.

Modern Photographs From an Ancient Landscape

The Shepherd's View

Georgia Donmoyer

James Ewen

Molly Bridge

Gabrielle Griffiths

Liz Prinz

James Haliburton

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. 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.

Julia A.

noura

James Maskell

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER 'Affectionate, evocative, illuminating. A story of survival - of a flock, a landscape and a disappearing way of life. I love this book' Nigel Slater 'Triumphant, a pastoral for the 21st century' Helen Davies, Sunday Times, Books of the Year 'The nature publishing sensation of the year, unsentimental yet luminous' Melissa Harrison, The Times, Books of the Year 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.

Sam Starling

Rachel Peterson

Kylie Pace

Sophie Gallagher

A major new talent redefines the literature of rural life. Old world met new when a shepherd in the English Lake District impulsively started a Twitter account. A routine cell phone upgrade left author James Rebanks with a pretty decent camera and a pre-loaded Twitter app--the tools to share his way of life with the world. And what began as a tentative experiment became an international phenomenon. James has worked the land for years, as did his father, and his father before him. His family has lived and farmed in the Lake District of Northern England as long as there have been written records (since 1420) and possibly much longer. And while the land itself has inspired great poets and authors we have rarely heard from the people who tend it. One Twitter account has changed all that, and now James Rebanks has broken free of the 140-character limit and produced "the book I have wanted to write my whole life." The Shepherd's Life is a memoir about growing up amidst a magical, storied landscape, of coming of age in the 1980s and 1990s among hills that seem timeless, and yet suffused with history. Broken into the four seasons, the book chronicles the author's daily experiences at work with his flock and brings alive his family and their ancient way of life, which at times can seem irreconcilable with the modern world. An astonishing original work, The Shepherd's Life is an intimate look from inside a seemingly ordinary life, one that celebrates the meaning of place, the ties of family to the land around them, and the beauty of the past. It is the untold story of the Lake District, of a people who exist and endure out of sight in the midst of the most iconic literary landscape in the world. From the Hardcover edition.

Sabine Delorme &
The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks

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Sabine Delorme &The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks

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Join the club

Sabine Delorme &
The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks