John Lewis-Stempel


John Lewis-Stempel is an English farmer, writer, and Sunday Times Top 5 best selling author. He was born in Herefordshire, where his family have lived for over 700 years.

Career

He has written on a range of subjects from Native Americans to fatherhood, but specialises in military history and natural history under his family name. He is a former columnist for The Sunday Express, and currently a columnist for Country Life. His column on nature and farming in Country Life won him Magazine Columnist of the Year in the 2016 BSME Awards.
Lewis-Stempel's book Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field won the Thwaites Wainwright Prize and was also short-listed for BBC Countryfile Country Book of the Year 2014. In 2016 The Running Hare was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and a Sunday Times best seller, and was shortlisted for the 2017 Wainwright Prize, The Richard Jefferies Society Prize and the Independent Bookshop Week Book Award. He won the 2017 Wainwright Prize with another shortlisted book, Where Poppies Blow, about British soldiers and their relationship with nature in World War I. The Spectator has described him as 'the hottest nature writer around', and The Times as 'Britain's finest living nature writer'. The Wood: The Life and Times of Cockshutt Wood, released in 2018, was also a Radio 4 Book of the Week, and Sunday Times top five bestseller.

Awards

Lewis-Stempel lives on a farm in Herefordshire with his wife and two children.