Meadowland

Book excerpt: What really goes on in the long grass? 'Meadowland' give an unique and intimate account of an English meadow's life from January to December, together with its biography. In exquisite prose, John Lewis-Stempel records the passage of the seasons from cowslips in spring to the hay-cutting of summer and grazing in autumn, and includes the biographies of the animals that inhabit the grass and the soil beneath: the badger clan, the fox family, the rabbit warren, the skylark brood, the curlew pair, among others. Their births, lives, and deaths are stories that thread through the book from first page to last.