The Wainwright Prize recognises the power of words to shape a greener future, celebrating the books that help us see the natural world, and our place within it, more clearly.
Take a look at these books shortlisted for the 2026 Nature Writing prize, now available to borrow with your library card.
Want more suggested books? Take a look at our recommendations.
Ancient: Reviving the Woods That Made Britain
Luke Barley
Ancient woods are Britain’s richest habitats: rare fragments of our landscape that teem with life from soil to canopy. They live in our collective imagination as quiet places, best left pristine and untouched. But their story has always been one of interdependence with people. Now, as ever, these woods – including remnants of the primeval ‘wildwood’ – need the thoughtful intervention of humans to survive.
With the benefit of over twenty years’ experience rehabilitating ancient woodland – from the Lakes to the Peak District, by way of suburban London’s hidden gems – Luke Barley brings us deep into this hidden world to reveal majestic oaks, freshly coppiced hazels, endangered limes, and the passionate individuals tending them for future generations.
Ghosts of the Farm: Two Women’s Journeys Through Time, Land and Community
Nicola Chester
The story of Miss White, a woman who lived in the author’s village 80 years ago, a pioneer who realised her ambition to become a farmer during the Second World War, and how she worked to become accepted within this community.
Nicola Chester, too, dreamed of becoming a farmer but working with horses was the only path open to her. Was it easier for women to become farmers in the 1940s than it is now?
Moving between Nicola’s own attempts to work outdoors and Miss White’s desire to farm a generation earlier, Nicola explores the parallels between their lives – and the differences. Miss White buys a derelict farm and begins to renovate and modernize it. As ghost (barn) owls flit between these two worlds, Nicola draws connections with farming and rural life in both times, from the role of women in rural communities in the modern day to Miss White’s experience in the 1940s.
Love is a Toad
Lucy Lapwing
Lucy Lapwing grew up ‘playing out’. A woodlouse-collecting, snail-racing, tree-climbing, muddy-footed child, she and her siblings spent more time playing outside than in. Lucy was always intrigued by the natural world, but it wasn’t until she was diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma at the age of twenty-three, that she found what she describes as ‘The Nature Thing’.
Over the months of her chemotherapy treatment, she burrowed even further down the nature wormhole, distracting herself by bumbling around nature reserves and greenspaces, snapping photos of any wildlife she found.
In her book, ‘Love Is A Toad’, Lucy seeks to explore and celebrate the world around us in all its muddy, messy and beautiful glory.
Craftland: A Journey Through Britain’s Lost Arts & Vanishing Trades
James Fox
Britain has always been a craft land. For generations what we made with our hands defined our families, communities and regions. ‘Craftland’ brings to life the vanishing skills, traditions and trades that shaped the fabric and governed the rhythms of everyday life in Britain for hundreds of years.
Through the stories of often humble-seeming objects of exquisite beauty, precision, utility and meaning, it shows how craft connects us to the land, emerging from local natural materials, and is the material expression of our regional identities and cultures.
And through encounters with some of the last remaining master craftspeople at work today – weavers and wheelwrights, coopers and coppice-workers, boat-builders and bell-founders, silversmiths and watch-makers – we glimpse not only our past but another way of life, one that is not yet lost and whose wisdom could yet shape our future.
The Genius of Trees
Harriet Rix
Taking us on an awe-inspiring journey through deep history and across the globe, ‘The Genius of Trees’ restores trees to their rightful position not as victims of our negligence but as ingenious, stunningly inventive agents in a grand ecological narrative.
Some have been using fire as a reproductive tool since prehistoric times. Others have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure their fruits reach large primates, who can spread their seeds over vast distances, while poisoning smaller and less useful mammals. Some can split solid rock and create fertile ground in barren landscapes, effectively building entire ecosystems from scratch.
For the first time, we witness the inventive and astonishing ways trees sculpt and even master their environment and understand the science of how they achieve these feats.
Stone Lands: A Journey of Darkness and Light Through Britain’s Ancient Places
Fiona Robertson and Philip Harris
Journeying across Britain, from West Penwith and Avebury to the Lake District and Orkney, ‘Stone Lands’ uncovers the magic and rich history of our incredible prehistoric standing stones. It conveys the delight that lies in tracking them down, as well as the solace these ancient places offer in times of darkness.
A few months after discovering that her beloved husband, Stephen, had incurable cancer, Fiona Robertson began to write this book. A long-time megalith enthusiast, she found the ancient stones resonated with her more profoundly than ever as she faced the prospect of losing him.
The Cuckoo’s Lea: The Forgotten History of Birds and Place
Michael J. Warren
Birds have long inspired our emotional and imaginative connections to physical environments, but where did it all begin?
Hidden in the names of English towns and villages, in copses, fields, lanes and hills, are the ghostly traces of birds conjuring powerful identities for people in ancient landscapes. What are their stories and secrets? How did people encounter birds over a thousand years ago?
In ‘The Cuckoo’s Lea’, Michael J. Warren sets out on the trail of these ghosts. Captivated and guided by the secrets of place names, he finds their stories entangled with his own explorations of places through birds all across England.
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