Stephen Rutt ~ The Eternal Season
Wednesday 30 June
7pm (BST), online
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Join us for a conversation with award-winning author Stephen Rutt as he talks about his new book, The Eternal Season, which brings us a poignant and evocative journey into the changing nature of a British summer.
‘Our summer wildlife is the filter through which we can see what’s really happening in our seasons. It’s a time when nature is buzzing with activity – breeding, migration, feeding frenzies – all on show for us to see how our species are faring.’ ~ Stephen Rutt
None of us will ever forget the summer of 2020. For Stephen Rutt it meant an enforced stay in rural Bedfordshire, before he could return again to the familiar landscapes of Scotland’s Dumfries. But wherever he found himself, he noted the abundance of nature teeming in our hedgerows, marshlands and woodlands – the birds, butterflies, moths and dragonflies, bats, frogs and plants that characterise the British summer.
Yet in his explorations of the landscapes and wildlife at the height of the year, he also began to see disturbances to the traditional rhythms of the natural world: the wrong birds singing at the wrong time, disruption to habitats and breeding, the myriad ways climate change is causing a derangement of the seasons.
The Eternal Season is both a celebration of summer and an observation of the delicate series of disorientations that we may not always notice while some birds still sing, while nature still has some voice, but that may be forever changing our perception of the heady days of summer.
About the author: Stephen Rutt is a 29-year-old award-winning writer, birder and naturalist, originally from Suffolk. In 2019 he published his first two books, The Seafarers and Wintering: A Season with Geese. As a teenager, he interned with Birdguides.co.uk and in 2015 he spent seven months at the bird observatory in North Ronaldsay. He lives in Dumfries and his writing has appeared in the Big Issue, Caught by the River, Daily Mail, Scotsman and Guardian among others. The Seafarers, his debut, attracted comparison to the likes of Amy Liptrot, Adam Nicolson and Tim Dee. It won The Saltire Society’s First Book of the Year, was longlisted for the Highland Book Prize and was the recipient of a Roger Deakin Award. Wintering was a Times’ Book of the Year. Both books are available as Elliott & Thompson paperbacks.