Winners of the three categories of the 2022 James Cropper Wainwright Prize include the ‘inspirational’ lockdown nature diary by James Aldred
Award-winning wildlife cameraman James Aldred and BBC food journalist and broadcaster Dan Saladino have been announced as winners of the Nature Writing and Writing for Conservation categories of the 2022 James Cropper Wainwright Prize. The inaugural Children’s Writing on Nature and Conservation Prize was awarded to brothers Rob and Tom Sears, for their illustrated children’s book The Biggest Footprint: Eight Billion Humans. One Clumsy Giant.
Aldred was filming a family of goshawks in the New Forest when the nationwide lockdown was announced in March 2020 to curb the spread of Covid-19. Alone in an ancient forest, he documents the unusually peaceful nature around him, and the unfolding dramas of the nest, in Goshawk Summer: The Diary of an Extraordinary Season in the Forest. TV presenter Ray Mears, chair of the judges, called the book a ‘beautiful inspirational tale set in an extraordinary time’.
The judges highly commended two other books in the Nature Writing category: On Gallows Down: Place, Protest and Belonging by Nicola Chester, a personal story of a landscape shaped by politics and environmental change, and Otherlands: A World in the Making by Thomas Halliday, which Geographical editor Katie Burton called a ‘rewarding’ and ‘immersive’ tour of prehistoric lands in her review.
In the Writing for Conservation category, the judges described Dan Saladino’s Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them as a ‘highly original’ book that offers ‘enormous hope for the future’. The result of 15 years of research, Saladino’s investigation into food biodiversity focuses on the uncertain future of many of the foods we rely on, and fascinating stories of the people who continue to cultivate, cook and consume many of the foods we have forgotten about, or never knew existed.
The judges also highly commended Wild Fell: Fighting for Nature on a Lake District Hill Farm by Lee Schofield, which Caroline Millar describes as an ‘urgent plea for diversity’ in her review for Geographical.
The three winners of the Wainwright prize, named after nature writer Alfred Wainwright, were chosen for their ability to inspire readers to explore the outdoors and to nurture a respect for the natural world.
