The Eternal Season

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