British writer and broadcaster
Richard Thomas Mabey (born 20 February 1941) is a writer and broadcaster, chiefly on the relations between nature and culture.
Education.
Mabey was educated at three independent schools, all in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. The first was at Rothesay School, followed by Berkhamsted Preparatory School and then Berkhamsted School. He then went to St Catherine's College at the University of Oxford where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
Life and work.
After Oxford, Mabey worked as a lecturer in Social Studies in Further Education at Dacorum College, Hemel Hempstead, then as a senior editor at Penguin Books. He became a full-time writer in 1974. He spent most of his life among the beechwoods of the Chilterns. He now lives in the Waveney Valley in Norfolk, with his partner Polly Lavender, and retreats to a boat on the Norfolk Broads.
He appeared in a 1975 episode of the BBC Television series "The World About Us", "In Deepest Britain", with John Gooders and other naturalists, giving an unscripted narration of the wildlife observed during a country walk. He wrote and presented later episodes of the series, including "The Unofficial Countryside" (1975), "The Flowering of Britain" (1980) and "A Prospect of Kew", about Kew Gardens (1981). "The Unofficial Countryside" and "The Flowering of Britain" were based on his books of the same names. He also wrote and narrated the 1996 BBC television series "Postcards from the Country", for whose eight, 40-minute episodes he was series producer, as well as being the producer-director on four. The book of the series "Postcards from the Country: living memories of the British countryside" (by Peter Marren and Mike Birkhead) includes a foreword by Mabey. "White Rock, Black Water" (1985) was a specially written episode of the series "The Natural World", about the limestone country of the Yorkshire Dales, and a Channel 4 eight-part series – "Back to the Roots" – explored the role of plants in Britain's contemporary culture. In the 1990s he often appeared on the BBC's "Country File".
Between 1982 and 1986 he sat on the UK government's advisory body, the Nature Conservancy Council. Mabey writes regularly for "The Guardian", the "New Statesman", "The Times" and "Granta". A selection of these writings was compiled as the book "Country Matters". He has written a personal column in "BBC Wildlife" magazine since 1984, and a selection of these columns has been published as "A Brush with Nature".
Between 2000 and 2002 Mabey suffered from depression, and his book "Nature Cure", describing his experiences and recovery in the context of man's relationship with landscape and nature, was short-listed for three major literary awards: the Whitbread Biography of the Year, the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize for evoking the spirit of place and the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography.
He has edited and introduced editions of Richard Jefferies, Gilbert White, Flora Thompson and Peter Matthiessen. His contributions to BBC Radio include "The Scientist and the Romantic", a series of five essays on his lifelong relationship with science and the natural environment broadcast in "The Essay" on Radio 3 in 2009, and "Changing Climates", on our everyday experience of living with the weather, in 2013. Mabey was the first president of the London Wildlife Trust and later a vice-president; Mabey's Meadow, named for him by the London Wildlife Trust, was one of his favourite haunts, and is described in his book "The Unofficial Countryside" (1974). It provides the only access to Frays Island in the River Colne.
Awards and distinctions.
Mabey has been awarded two Leverhulme Fellowships, and honorary doctorates by St Andrews, Essex and East Anglia for his contributions to nature writing. He was awarded a Civil List Pension in 2008 for services to literature. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2011. He is a trustee of the arts and conservation charity Common Ground, vice-president of the Open Spaces Society, patron of the John Clare Society and president of the Waveney and Blythe Arts.
His life of Gilbert White won the 1986 Whitbread Biography of the Year. His "Flora Britannica" won the British Book Awards' Illustrated Book of the Year and the Botanical Society of the British Isles' President's Award, and was runner-up for the BP Natural World Book Prize.
He was a guest on the BBC Radio 4 programme "Desert Island Discs" in 1997.
Portraits.
The National Portrait Gallery has a 1984 bromide print of Richard Mabey by Mark Gerson. Mabey sat for sculptor Jon Edgar in Norfolk during 2007, as part of the "Environment Triptych" (2008) along with Mary Midgley and James Lovelock.
References.
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