The Unofficial Countryside

by Richard Mabey

During the early 1970s Richard Mabey explored crumbling city docks and overgrown bomb-sites, navigated inner city canals and car parks, and discovered there was scarcely a nook in our urban landscape incapable of supporting life. The Unofficial Countryside is a timely reminder of how nature flourishes against the odds, surviving in the most obscure and surprising places. First published 1973 by William Collins Sons & Co.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Natural History, Ecology, British Literature, Environment, Essays

157 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1973

About the author

Richard Mabey is one of England's greatest nature writers. He is author of some thirty books including Nature Cure which was shortlisted for the Whitbread, Ondaatje and Ackerley Awards.

A regular commentator on the radio and in the national press, he is also a Director of the arts and conservation charity Common Ground and Vice-President of the Open Spaces Society. He lives in Norfolk.

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This re-issue of Richard Mabey's early 70s book about what we would now call brown field sites was not quite what I expected. It was more rambling and unfocused but I revelled in it. It is quite terrifying that the man who could write this fundamentally optimistic and uplifting stuff about the the grottiest places in England, who was this immersed in nature, could succumb to such a severe depression as he later did.

It is a delicious volume under the Little Toller imprint and I am taking good care to note down the other nature classics they produce. It is good in the hand, in a way you usually only get with a slimmish hardbook. The illustrations are by Mary Newcomb, an artist I did not know before, but they complement the text perfectly.

One of the lovely things about reading this book is that some of the things Mabey did not, even in his optimism, foresee have come to pass - many cities now boast of their peregrines.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nearly half a century old, this fairly short but readable book captures the natural condition of the urban environment at that moment in the 1970s when a decaying industrial modernity was about to give way to environmentalism and a service economy.

Mabey's message, insofar as there is one, is that nature is resilient and can find niches in the most surprising places disregarded by us as wastelands - brown field sites, urban streets, rubbish tips, sewage farms, railway and canal networks and quarries as well as in urban gardens.

This is a personal account in a long tradition of British nature writing. He does us a service by pointing out that our wastelands are refuges as far as many birds and plants and some mammals are concerned. He coruscates manicured municipal parks as perhaps the true wastelands.

For Mabey, it is the chaotics of nature that make it interesting. He emphasises the importance of allowing children access to things they can pick rather than be told to keep off the grass and not touch. He sees how life uses our trash as tools for its own survival.

Ironically, relative prosperity and urban development may since have helped protect obvious green areas with the rise of the conservation movement but possibly at the expense of the loss of really productive (for nature) wastelands and brown field sites to construction projects.

He is also open-minded about natural aliens and visitors, seeing them as finding their own niches and creating new natural balances. This was to became the attitude of urban humans to human migrants until very recently and the emergence of terrorism and the low wage economy.

The book has one flaw - or at least it is a flaw of the publisher of the Pimlico Edition. Mabey reels off the names of plants and birds but each requires some sort of line illustration if not photograph or else it becomes just a list of inside information by a specialist.

If we are to make use of this book, we need to be able to go out into the areas he identifies and see what he sees. Simply saying that we may see groundsel, petty spurge, fat hen, shepherd's purse and docks on disturbed ground tells us little if we do not have a 'show and tell'.

Nevertheless, Mabey is a good and evocative writer. Even if he is writing about a world that will have changed since (there are many excellent 1970s BBC and ITV dramas of the period on YouTube that give you a feel for the wasted London of the period) it is still useful.

Mabey also has a good sense of historical change exemplified by his short account of the history of Hampstead Heath but also by interesting snippets on the shifting spread of particular birds and plants. What is clear is that there is no fixed English nature now if ever there was one.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If the ability of wildlife to survive literally on our doorsteps is remarkable, its persistence in the face of ceaseless change is amazing. It is also, I find, immensely cheering. For it is a bleak view to see this story as nothing more than one of survival, with Nature irrevocably opposed to Man, forever just holding on. Looked at more hopefully it is a story of co-existence, of how it is possible for the natural world to live alongside man, even amongst his grimiest eyesores" - Prologue, p.15

What an excellent book! I loved the whole outlook of this author who, like most of us, has to work for a living and find space to connect with nature where he can. Bearing in mind, too, that this was published in 1973, it is heartening to read this statement on the flyleaf:

"Papers used by Random House UK Limited are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests"

Originally intending to write the book as a journey around London, Mabey immediately found a sense of unease creeping upon him. Walking in urban landscapes did not seem to work. Too quickly it became a matter of ticking off species and, crucially, leaving out great 'empty' stretches where shopping centres and car parks provided nothing for his naturalist's eyes to light upon. I share his frustration. My own attempts to walk through cities have also left me footsore and dissatisfied. A book written about such walks would have to be dishonest or depressing to work at all, and Mabey wanted neither of those.

What he does instead is start by charting the natural history of urban 'waste' land and exploring, through the seasons, those moments that we urban types long for: the swoop and chatter of a family of Long-Tailed Tits passing through, the dogged strength of Rosebay Willowherb in the verges, the serene dance of Hover Flies in the shade between hedges. He challenges the attitudes of those who decide for landholding organisations that certain species should be labelled 'weeds', 'pests' and 'vermin', and suggests ways in which their presence may be celebrated, included and used to enhance our experience and knowledge; and he highlights some fine examples of good practice where councils and corporations have demonstrated that wonderful gift of imagination that we all share.

This book is a real gem, written in an easy, honest and informative style, and at only 173 pages is a must for anyone who has begun to be drawn to the edges where signs of life remind us that we too are wild, natural and live in community with the lives around us.

[5greenway · Rating 5 out of 5]

Benchmark naturey writing.

[Tom Jonesman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written 45 years ago, this book simultaneously evokes nostalgia for a lost time, and encourages the consideration of the many forms of non-human life that can be found almost everywhere. Some truly beautiful passages beg to be read and re-read again and again. I was pleased, as an amateur lichenologist, that the coexisting complexity, hardiness, ubiquity and fragility of the lichenosphere was touched upon. Undoubtedly one of those books that makes you look at the world differently.

[Alex Boon · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first experience of Mabey, strange it's taken so long to get to him considering my preferred genre. I adore the simplicity of his writing and although some of the information included is well out of date, the book suffers little for that. What is good to note is that Mabey, by writing this book and others, drew attention to many of the environmental issues described herein, and sat as consultant eventually to make a real difference. Inspiring.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting ramble through urban wastelands and the way plants and birds are using them as new areas to grow and thrive. The problem is you have to be familiar with English birds and plants or have a field guide to both.

[Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE Richard Mabey.

[Stephanie Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book examines and appreciates parts of the countryside that are unloved, that have been left to flourish under the nose of human development. Mabey bird watches along sewage treatment plants and town dumps, quarries and neglected canalways. He describes plants like rosebay willowherb that seed on disturbed ground and pigeons, crows, and small mammals that manage to survive feasting on rubbish. He moves well beyond the picturesque aspects of nature to show how human development has forced nature to adapt, and how nature has adapted endlessly and energetically. The prose is fantastically vivid and interesting. He knows a lot about botany and engineering, and I learned a lot.

[Paul Simpson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book as relevant today as it was when it was written fifty years ago. It allowed me to lose myself in the 'edgelands' and learn as much, if not more about nature there as I would in our greenfields.

[Sølvi Goard · Rating 5 out of 5]

For something written in the 70s this feels very contemporary.

[Mark Greco · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic. Very accessible and encourages you to take a second look at nature on your doorstep.

[G. Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

[Jonathan Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant nature writing about wildlife on the periphery of towns and cities.

[Bob Lindsay-Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic. Richard Mabey always writes well.