Stephen Rutt – författare

*LONGLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING 2026‘This deeply felt book meanders rather like one of Rutt’s beloved rivers … compelling.’ Daily MailFrom the award-winning author of The Seafarers and Wintering comes an utterly original and compelling fascinating exploration of the most miraculous substance on Earth: water.It falls in a moment. When the heaviest droplets of ice can no longer be held, the first raindrop slips from the sky and plunges, down through the damp, cold air, thawing as it plummets. Splashing into the sodden hillside, rainfall merging with river source, it flows for the first time.The Waterlands is a new story of water, revealing its natural rhythms and miraculous power. Follow a raindrop as it flows through diverse waterscapes: river sources in the upland moors; saltmarsh-flanked firths and estuaries; serene and spectacular lochs; crystal-clear chalk streams; blanket bogs that are both land and liquid, a thin skin of peat over millennia-old water.On this epic journey, award-winning writer Stephen Rutt visits these places where life flourishes, revealing how water shapes the land, shapes our lives – and how we shape it in return. Beautifully blending geography, ecology, climate writing and social history, The Waterlands is a captivating retelling of the water cycle, and an urgent call to protect our most essential resource.You’ll never see a raindrop the same way again. Praise for The Seafarers and Wintering:‘A beautifully illuminating portrait of lives lived largely on the wing and at sea.’ Julian Hoffman, author of Lifelines ‘A poignant testament to how we can find peace in the rhythms of the natural world.’ The Times, Nature Books of the Year 2019‘Rutt's dreamy prose is as cool and elegant as the season he charts.’ Jon Dunn, BBC Wildlife

*WINNER* of the Saltire First Book of the Year 2019 / Longlisted for the Highland Book Prize 2019'A beautifully illuminating portrait of lives lived largely on the wing and at sea" - Julian Hoffman, author of Irreplaceable and The Small Heart of ThingsThe British Isles are remarkable for their extraordinary seabird life: spectacular gatherings of charismatic Arctic terns, elegant fulmars and stoic eiders, to name just a few. Often found in the most remote and dramatic reaches of our shores, these colonies are landscapes shaped not by us but by the birds.In 2015, Stephen Rutt escaped his hectic, anxiety-inducing life in London for the bird observatory on North Ronaldsay, the most northerly of the Orkney Islands. In thrall to these windswept havens and the people and birds that inhabit them, he began a journey to the edges of Britain. From Shetland, to the Farnes of Northumberland, down to the Welsh islands off the Pembrokeshire coast, he explores the part seabirds have played in our history and what they continue to mean to Britain today.The Seafarers is the story of those travels: a love letter, written from the rocks and the edges, for the salt-stained, isolated and ever-changing lives of seabirds. This beguiling book reveals what it feels like to be immersed in a completely wild landscape, examining the allure of the remote in an over-crowded world.

The new season begins. The geese return… Selected as a BOOK OF THE YEAR by The TimesThe arrival of huge flocks of geese in the UK is one of the most evocative and powerful harbingers of winter; a vast natural phenomenon to capture the imagination. So Stephen Rutt found when he moved to Dumfries one autumn, coinciding with the migration of thousands of pink-footed geese who spend their winter in the Firth. Thus began an extraordinary odyssey.From his new surroundings in the north to the wide open spaces of his childhood home in the south, Stephen traces the lives and habits of the most common species of goose in the UK and explores the place they have in our culture, our history and, occasionally, on our festive table.Wintering takes you on a vivid tour of the inbetween landscapes the geese inhabit, celebrating the short days, varied weathers and long nights of the season during which we share our home with these large, startling, garrulous and cooperative birds.Praise for Wintering:‘A poignant testament to how we can find peace in the rhythms of the natural world.’ - The Times, Books of the Year 2019‘Illuminating history and descriptive nature writing make Wintering an understated gem.’ - Waterstones.com, Gifts for Nature Lovers‘Rutt's dreamy prose is as cool and elegant as the season he charts.’ - Jon Dunn, BBC Wildlife‘I will never look at geese the same again. Strangely, I can't wait for winter.’ - Caught by the River

A soaring celebration of summer and a poignant journey into the changing nature of the British season – from the award-winning author of Wintering and The Seafarers.Summer is traditionally a time of plenty, of warmth; a time to celebrate abundance. And so Stephen Rutt sets out to explore the natural world during its moment of fullest bloom. Butterflies and dragonflies add colour to his days; moths and bats lift the warm nights; swallows, nightjars and wood warblers fill the forests and skies.What Stephen notices too, however, are the many ways in which the season is becoming deranged by a changed and changing climate: the wrong birds singing at the wrong time; August days as cold as February; the creeping disturbances that we may not notice while nature still has some voice.The Eternal Season is both a celebration of summer and a warning of the unravelling of this beautiful web of abundant life. This is a book that sings with love and careful observation, with an eye on all that we might lose but also save.***'An urgent and beautiful walk through the changing character of the British summer.' Rebecca Schiller, author of Earthed'Elegant, vivid, thoroughly absorbing, The Eternal Season strikes the perfect balance between celebrating the natural world and sounding a realistic warning about the damage we continue to wreak on it. All in all, a treat.’ Lev Parikian, author of Into the Tangled Bank

*LONGLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING 2026‘This deeply felt book meanders rather like one of Rutt’s beloved rivers … compelling.’ Daily MailFrom the award-winning author of The Seafarers and Wintering comes an utterly original and compelling fascinating exploration of the most miraculous substance on Earth: water.It falls in a moment. When the heaviest droplets of ice can no longer be held, the first raindrop slips from the sky and plunges, down through the damp, cold air, thawing as it plummets. Splashing into the sodden hillside, rainfall merging with river source, it flows for the first time.The Waterlands is a new story of water, revealing its natural rhythms and miraculous power. Follow a raindrop as it flows through diverse waterscapes: river sources in the upland moors; saltmarsh-flanked firths and estuaries; serene and spectacular lochs; crystal-clear chalk streams; blanket bogs that are both land and liquid, a thin skin of peat over millennia-old water.On this epic journey, award-winning writer Stephen Rutt visits these places where life flourishes, revealing how water shapes the land, shapes our lives – and how we shape it in return. Beautifully blending geography, ecology, climate writing and social history, The Waterlands is a captivating retelling of the water cycle, and an urgent call to protect our most essential resource.You’ll never see a raindrop the same way again. Praise for The Seafarers and Wintering:‘A beautifully illuminating portrait of lives lived largely on the wing and at sea.’ Julian Hoffman, author of Lifelines ‘A poignant testament to how we can find peace in the rhythms of the natural world.’ The Times, Nature Books of the Year 2019‘Rutt's dreamy prose is as cool and elegant as the season he charts.’ Jon Dunn, BBC Wildlife