Richard Mabey

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Richard Thomas Mabey (born 20 February 1941) is a writer and broadcaster, chiefly on the relations between nature and culture.

Education

Mabey was educated at three independent schools, all in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. The first was at Rothesay School, followed by Berkhamsted Preparatory School and then Berkhamsted School. He then went to St Catherine's College at the University of Oxford where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Life and work

After Oxford, Mabey worked as a lecturer in Social Studies in Further Education at Dacorum College, Hemel Hempstead, then as a senior editor at Penguin Books.<ref name="Laing">Template:Cite news</ref> He became a full-time writer in 1974. He spent most of his life among the beechwoods of the Chilterns. He now lives in the Waveney Valley in Norfolk, with his partner Polly Lavender,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and retreats to a boat on the Norfolk Broads.

He appeared in a 1975 episode of the BBC Television series The World About Us, "In Deepest Britain", with John Gooders and other naturalists, giving an unscripted narration of the wildlife observed during a country walk.<ref name="Countryfile">Template:Cite episode</ref><ref name="BFI">Template:Cite web</ref> He wrote and presented later episodes of the series, including "The Unofficial Countryside" (1975),<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> "The Flowering of Britain" (1980)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and "A Prospect of Kew", about Kew Gardens (1981).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> "The Unofficial Countryside" and "The Flowering of Britain" were based on his books of the same names. He also wrote and narrated the 1996 BBC television series Postcards from the Country, for whose eight, 40-minute episodes he was series producer, as well as being the producer-director on four. "White Rock, Black Water" (1985) was a specially written episode of the series The Natural World, about the limestone country of the Yorkshire Dales, and a Channel 4 eight-part series – Back to the Roots – explored the role of plants in Britain's contemporary culture. In the 1990s he often appeared on the BBC's Country File.<ref name="Countryfile"/><ref name="BFI"/>

Between 1982 and 1986 he sat on the UK government's advisory body, the Nature Conservancy Council. Mabey writes regularly for The Guardian, the New Statesman, The Times and Granta. A selection of these writings was compiled as the book Country Matters. He has written a personal column in BBC Wildlife magazine since 1984, and a selection of these columns has been published as A Brush with Nature.

Between 2000 and 2002 Mabey suffered from depression, and his book Nature Cure, describing his experiences and recovery in the context of man's relationship with landscape and nature, was short-listed for three major literary awards: the Whitbread Biography of the Year, the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize for evoking the spirit of place and the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography.

He has edited and introduced editions of Richard Jefferies, Gilbert White, Flora Thompson and Peter Matthiessen. His contributions to BBC Radio include "The Scientist and the Romantic", a series of five essays on his lifelong relationship with science and the natural environment broadcast in The Essay on Radio 3 in 2009, and Changing Climates, on our everyday experience of living with the weather, in 2013. Mabey was the first president of the London Wildlife Trust<ref name="Mabey's Meadow">Template:Cite web</ref> and later a vice-president;<ref name="Wild London">Template:Cite web</ref> Mabey's Meadow, named for him by the London Wildlife Trust, was one of his favourite haunts, and is described in his book The Unofficial Countryside (1974). It provides the only access to Frays Island in the River Colne.<ref name="Mabey's Meadow"/>

Awards and distinctions

Mabey has been awarded two Leverhulme Fellowships, and honorary doctorates by St Andrews, Essex and East Anglia for his contributions to nature writing. He was awarded a Civil List Pension in 2008 for services to literature. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2011.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He is a trustee of the arts and conservation charity Common Ground, vice-president of the Open Spaces Society, patron of the John Clare Society and president of the Waveney and Blythe Arts.Template:Citation needed

His life of Gilbert White won the 1986 Whitbread Biography of the Year.Template:Citation needed His Flora Britannica won the British Book Awards' Illustrated Book of the Year and the Botanical Society of the British Isles' President's Award, and was runner-up for the BP Natural World Book Prize.Template:Citation needed

He was a guest on the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs in 1997.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Portraits

The National Portrait Gallery has a 1984 bromide print of Richard Mabey by Mark Gerson.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Mabey sat for sculptor Jon Edgar in Norfolk during 2007, as part of the Environment Triptych (2008)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> along with Mary Midgley and James Lovelock.

Works


Contributions

Introductions and forewords

Educational and children's books

  • Pop Process (Hutchinson 1969)
  • Behind the Scene
  • Food
  • Children in Primary School
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  • Oak And Company (Kestrel Books, 1983) ISBN 0722651023

Films

  • Postcards from the Country, BBC, 1996
  • Richard Mabey's 2011 "Botanical Busk" tour (of the London canals, commissioned by the Floating Cinema)<ref name="BBt">Template:Cite web</ref>

Radio

References

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