The Shepherd's Life: A Tale of the Lake District - Tapa dura

The nature publishing sensation of the year . . . Unsentimental yet luminous . . . An antidote to our modern metropolitan cynicism and a deeply moral book (Melissa Harrison, 'Books of the Year' The Times)

The Shepherd's Life gives the finger to Wordsworth. James Rebanks seems never happier than when his hand is up a Herdwick sheep's arse, but his book is a superbly written ode to an ancient way of life, and brought back childhood summers in the Lake District when I didn't look hard enough (Nicholas Hytner, 'Books of the Year' Guardian)

This beautifully sure-footed memoir ... peels back the plastic packaging to reveal the attritional nature of hill farming, with its knife-edge dangers, noise, blood, guts, familial claustrophobia and glorious countryside. It is an unsentimental education that celebrates the real countryside shorn of its lyrical excesses. It is also a triumphant tale of finding one's "alive and necessary" self. A pastoral for the 21st century (MEMOIR OF THE YEAR Sunday Times)

One sees the countryside differently after reading it . . . A rare and honest book about the realities of working life in the 21st-century countryside (Richard Benson, 'Books of the Year' Independent)

Evocative and perceptive (Patrick Barkham, Guardian 'Books of the Year')

This unsentimental account of the ups and downs of life as a Lake District shepherd has been one of the hits of the year . . . An instant rural classic, our age's Lark Rise or Cider with Rosie (Books of the Year Mail on Sunday)

Blissful . . . Rebanks writes with loving eloquence about a kind of deep-rooted life that is all but lost in the developed world (Geraldine Brooks, 'Books of the Year' Wall Street Journal)

A very good book (Alan Bennett)

This book makes you feel glad to be alive: James Rebanks is our modern equivalent of John Clare, Britain's greatest writer of the hard labour and radiant grace of the shepherd's life (Sir Jonathan Bate)

Affectionate, evocative, illuminating. A story of survival - of a flock, a landscape and a disappearing way of life. I love this book (Nigel Slater, author of Toast and The Kitchen Diaries)