In 2006, the Guardian's much-loved Country Diary column was a hundred years old, and to commemorate the anniversary Martin Wainwright has compiled a collection of the best of a century's writing.
The Country Diary column has consistently attracted some of Britain's best writers on natural history and the countryside: Jim Perrin the mountaineering writer, whose biography of Don Whillans won the Boardman-Tasker Award, writes the dispatches from Snowdonia; Mark Cocker, author of the bestselling Birds Britannica, writes the Country Diary from Norfolk. There are also diaries written by a leading Suffragette, one of Rupert Brooke's mistresses, and even one of the Guardian's printers.
Martin Wainwright is Northern Editor of the Guardian, and lives in Leeds. He edited A Lifetime of Mountains, and is currently working on The Guardian Book of April Fool's Day, also to be published by Aurum.