This book focuses on a specific season, Spring. However Morpurgo talks about the pattern of seasons. “Seasons come and seasons go. They create the pace of our lives, a unifying element for all of us who live here. We see nature and the countryside and farming as m uch as our predecssors did, we live in the same rhythym as they did. We share this place with them, live the same seasons”.
Morpurgo also talks about change and human impact on nature. “The presence of boht kingfisher and otter gives us some hope for the river. WE need more than hope. of course. When we first came to live here fifty years ago we could and did swimin often in the Torridge river. .. You wouldn’t do it now. It is simply too polluted. We have, all of us, used and abused our rivers in this country over many decades farmed around them too intensively, poured our sewage into them, extracted water from them, overfished them, neglected them.”
Morpurgo also takes excerpts and poem’s and interweaves them throughout the novel.
Summer is Icumun In, is quoted towards the end of the book and provides a useful summary of seasonal change.
Summer is a coming in,
Loudly sing, Cuckoo!
Groweth seed and bloweth mead,
And springeth wood anew,
Sing, Cuckoo!
Ewe bleateth after lamb
The cow lows after the calf.
Bullock starteth buck, too, verteth*,
Merrily sing, Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo, well you sing,
cuckoo;
Of cease thee never now,Sing cuckoo now. Sing, Cuckoo.
Sing Cuckoo. Sing cuckoo now!
This book was longlisted for the Wainright Prize for Nature Writing in 2025
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