English Pastoral is a joy to read and extremely moving - a book which should be read by every citizen. Rebanks is eloquent - scenes of mud and guts are interspersed with quotes ranging from Virgil to Schumpeter, Rachel Carson to Wendell Berry .

A wonderful, humane book told through the eyes of a man who has watched much vanish from his land, and now wants to put it back . It tells of how rural landscapes around the world were brought close to collapse, and how the age-old rhythms of work, weather, community and wild things were lost. Heralded as a 'masterpiece' by the New Statesman , it was shortlisted for the Ondaatje prize, and longlisted for the Rathbones Folio prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. His second book, English Pastoral, was also a Top Ten bestseller and was named the Sunday Times Nature Book of the Year.But it is also uplifting : Rebanks is determined to hang on to his Herdwicks, to keep producing food, and to bring back the curlews and butterflies and the soil fertility to his beloved fields. He makes no bones about the hardness of the life and his frustration at having to earn money outside the farm to make ends meet. This is a course of action that increasing numbers of farmers will have to pursue as we leave the EU’s subsidy system. In recent years, I have come across many farmers who are working hard to address the problems Rebanks identifies, whether in restoring soil fertility, improving animal welfare or encouraging wildlife to flourish. Rebanks didn’t get on with his father and chose to spend his spare time helping out on his grandfather’s farm rather than his father’s.

I have never met anyone so roaringly, joyously in context and content as James Rebanks, belting around his farm in the rain . Removing sheep from these fells in favour of trees, or reducing headage numbers making the business of shepherding unviable, would set in motion a chain of consequences which would alter both the landscapes and the communities. Stewardship schemes reward farmers for planting trees and maintaining hedges as the author now does.

Vivid, accessible, inspiring - a story about one man's emerging land ethic, and an appreciation of the old ways in modern times . Farming, unlike almost any other job, is bound up in a series of complex ropes that Rebanks captures in his own story so beautifully: family pressure and loyalty, ego, loneliness, and a special kind of peer pressure. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian View image in fullscreen Sisyphus with a smile … James Rebanks with his Herdwick sheep in Cumbria. Most people are now largely illiterate when it comes to agriculture and ecology,’ says Rebanks, who has shone a brilliant light onto a world about which the vast majority of people know little.