Sophie Yeo is the winner of the Richard Jefferies Award for the best nature writing issued in 2024 for her book Nature’s Ghosts: The World We Lost and How to Get it Back published by HarperNorth.
The judging panel praised the book, Sophie’s first, for its appealing, thoughtful and impressively researched approach to the subject of environmental change and conservation. Yeo invites fresh consideration of the long history of change, ‘peering into the annals of the earth’, to better understand how it has survived profound climate upheavals and the impact of human activity in the past, and to recognise the lessons these may have for modern conservation strategies. ‘I don’t believe that we can, or should, attempt to rewind the world to a specific point in time’, she writes. ‘But that does not mean that we should treat the past as irrelevant.’ While Yeo’s interest in ancient human societies and her sense of the wildness still present in the human psyche were subjects of significant interest to her Victorian predecessor, Richard Jefferies, her own animated eloquence and persuasive approach will encourage a wide readership to engage in a nuanced way with current debates about the politics of land ownership, managing change, rewilding, and a host of related and pressing issues.
Professor Barry Sloan, Chair of the panel of judges, said:
By looking at the long history of environmental change and the role of people within it, the ghosts of the past, Sophie Yeo explores its relevance to the challenges facing the natural world today, and she writes in an engaging and accessible way for the modern audience.
Sophie Yeo said:
I am honoured and overjoyed that Nature's Ghosts has received the Richard Jefferies Award. I wrote it in the firm belief that history has lessons for us all when it comes to modern-day nature conservation: both as a scientific blueprint for what might be achieved, and as a way of re-enchanting us with the wonders of the natural world. Historical observers of the landscape, like Jefferies, have provided us with one such window into a world that has been largely lost, but that we should – in part – aspire to revive.
Sophie Yeo becomes the tenth winner of the Richard Jefferies Award which is jointly sponsored by the Richard Jefferies Society and The White Horse Bookshop in Marlborough, and is given for the most outstanding nature writing published in the past year. Nature’s Ghost was chosen from a strong shortlist of titles consisting of The Lost Paths (Michael Joseph) by Jack Cornish; Lost Wonders (Picador) by Tom Lathan; and The Accidental Garden (Profile Books) by Richard Mabey.
