The Wainwright Prize for Conservation Writing

Shortlist 2025

The Lie of the Land

By Guy Shrubsole

Our landowning elite are paid billions of taxpayer pounds to be good stewards, but they have trampled over our best-loved landscapes, leaving the rivers polluted, fenlands drained, and moorlands burned. Guy Shrubsole has travelled across Britain to expose the lie and meet the communities fighting back to restore our lost landscapes. This is a bold, shared vision for our nation’s wild places, and how we can treat them with the awe and care they deserve.

About Guy Shrubsole

Guy Shrubsole is an environmental campaigner and writer. He is the author of Who Owns England?, an instant Sunday Times bestseller, and The Lost Rainforests of Britain, which won the Wainwright Prize for Writing on Conservation and was shortlisted for the Richard Jefferies Society Literary Prize. For the past decade and a half Guy has campaigned on the climate and nature crises, working for a wide range of organisations from Friends of the Earth and the Right to Roam campaign, to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). He lives in Devon.

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