Richard Mabey

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. 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, 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. He wrote and presented later episodes of the series, including "The Unofficial Countryside" (1975), "The Flowering of Britain" (1980) and "A Prospect of Kew", about Kew Gardens (1981). "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. and later a vice-president; 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. 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.

His life of Gilbert White won the 1986 Whitbread Biography of the Year. 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.

He was a guest on the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs in 1997.

Portraits

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

Works

(with Francesca Greenoak)

(with Michael McIntyre)

(with illustrations by Clare Roberts) - photography by Gareth Lovett Jones

(co-author)

Contributions

(Editor) (Editor) (Editor)

Class (ed.), 1968 The Natural History of Selborne (ed.), Penguin, 1977 In Search of Food (with David Mabey) Cold Comforts, 1983 Second Nature (ed.), 1984 NHS Everyman (ed.), 1993 Landscape with Figures: an anthology of Richard Jefferies (ed.), 1986-9 The Oxford Book of Nature Writing, 1995 The Yorkshire Dales (with landscape photographer Graham Nobles) The Garden of Weeds, 2010

Introductions and forewords

The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen, Viking Press, 1978,

The Tree: A Celebration of Our Living Skyline, edited by Peter Wood, David & Charles, 1993,

An Exaltation of Skylarks, compiled by Stewart Beer, SMH Books, (1995), Lark Rise to Candleford (2009 edition)

Educational and children's books Pop Process (Hutchinson 1969) Behind the Scene Food Children in Primary School

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)

Radio

The Essay: "The Scientist and the Romantic", BBC Radio 3 (5 episodes, 2009) Mabey in the Wild, BBC Radio 4 (2 series, 2011-) The Essay: "Changing Climates", BBC Radio 3 (5 episodes, 2013)