A Year with Gilbert White

'Uglow makes us feel the life beyond the facts.' - Guardian

'Few can match Uglow's skill at conjuring up a scene, or illuminating a character.' - Sunday Times

'Uglow's style is supremely elegant and often amusingly bathetic, her research exhaustive but lightly worn.' - Financial Times

In 1781, Gilbert White was a country curate in the Hampshire village he had known all his life. Fascinated by the fauna, the flora and the people around him, he kept journals for many years. Now he was halfway through completing his path-breaking Natural History of Selbourne - in print since 1789, paving the way for later naturalists. No one had written like this before, with such close observation, humour, and sympathy.

Pulsating with curiosity, charm and knowledge, A Year with Gilbert White illuminates this dynamic and subtle man, often called 'the father of ecology'. With his diary to hand, we follow the seasons, from bitter frost to summer drought, noting everything from the migration of birds to the sex lives of snails, and the vagaries of local life - an invitation to see the natural world afresh, through eyes forever open to astonishment and wonder.