Wainwright Prize winners and shortlisted books

Every book below won or was shortlisted for a Wainwright Prize, checked against the published prize lists. The prize began as a single award for nature writing and later added conservation and children's categories, so each entry gives the year and category. Each entry also says what the book is about and who it suits.

Winners

• Blue Machine by Helen Czerski (2024, Writing on Conservation). Suits readers curious about how the ocean works: Czerski describes the whole ocean as a single engine powered by sunlight and shows how it shapes animals, weather and human history.
• The Flow by Amy-Jane Beer (2023, Nature Writing). Suits readers of nature writing that deals with loss: years after a friend died kayaking the River Rawthey in Cumbria, Amy-Jane Beer returns to rivers and her connection to them.
• The Lost Rainforests of Britain by Guy Shrubsole (2023, Writing on Conservation). Suits readers interested in British woodland and landscapes. Shrubsole travels from the Western Highlands to Cornwall to map what remains of Britain's temperate rainforest, and makes the case for bringing it back.
• Eating to Extinction by Dan Saladino (2022, Writing on Conservation). Suits cooks and anyone interested in food: Saladino travels the world to find foods at risk of disappearing and meets the farmers, cooks and communities working to keep them.
• English Pastoral by James Rebanks (2021, UK Nature Writing). Suits readers interested in farming and the countryside: Rebanks describes how his family's farm in the Lake District hills changed after his grandfather's time and how he set out to restore a corner of it.
• Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake (2021, Writing on Global Conservation). Suits anyone curious about fungi: Sheldrake explains how these organisms drive many of nature's processes and how they can affect our minds and bodies. Also stocked as an illustrated edition with over 100 colour images.
• Meadowland by John Lewis-Stempel (2015). Suits readers who like a year-long nature diary: it follows one English meadow from January to December, with the badgers, foxes, rabbits, skylarks and curlews that live there.

Shortlisted books

2024

• Wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Wallis (Writing on Conservation). Suits readers who want to know what happens to rubbish: Franklin-Wallis follows waste through the global industry that handles it, from the landfills of New Delhi to Britain.

2023

• Nomad Century by Gaia Vince (Writing on Conservation). Suits readers thinking about climate change and migration. Vince sets out how rising temperatures will force large numbers of people to move, and how that movement could be planned for.
• Rewilding the Sea by Charles Clover (Writing on Conservation). Suits readers interested in the sea and fishing: Clover reports on places where giving marine life room to recover, from Lyme Bay to Atlantic bluefin tuna, has helped both wildlife and local communities.
• Rooted by Sarah Langford (Writing on Conservation). Suits readers interested in how farming is changing: Langford, a barrister who left city life, learns to farm and meets farmers moving to regenerative methods.
• The Golden Mole by Katherine Rundell (Nature Writing). Suits animal lovers: Rundell tours some of the world's strangest animals, including pangolins, wombats, lemurs and seahorses, all of them endangered.

2022

• On Gallows Down by Nicola Chester (Nature Writing). Suits readers interested in rural England: Guardian Country Diarist Nicola Chester writes about the landscape she grew up in, and about protest and belonging.
• Otherlands by Thomas Halliday (Nature Writing). Suits readers curious about prehistoric life: palaeobiologist Thomas Halliday describes a series of ancient landscapes, from the mammoth steppe of Ice Age Alaska to the rainforests of Eocene Antarctica.
• Regenesis by George Monbiot (Writing on Conservation). Suits readers who want to understand the environmental cost of food: Monbiot argues that farming is the biggest cause of environmental destruction and draws on soil ecology to propose other ways to feed the world.
• Shadowlands by Matthew Green (Nature Writing). Suits readers of British history and landscape: historian Matthew Green visits Britain's lost cities, ghost towns and vanished villages and explains how each disappeared.
• The Instant by Amy Liptrot (Nature Writing). Suits readers of memoir about city life and nature. After leaving Orkney for Berlin, Liptrot spends a year looking for work and love through her phone, while noticing the city's wildlife, the moon and migrating birds.
• Wild Fell by Lee Schofield (Writing on Conservation). Suits readers interested in rewilding upland farms: RSPB ecologist Lee Schofield describes the work to restore two hill farms at Haweswater in the Lake District.

2020

• Dark, Salt, Clear by Lamorna Ash (UK Nature Writing). Suits readers interested in Cornwall beyond the holiday view: Ash moves to the fishing town of Newlyn and joins local fishermen on a week-long trawler trip.
• Native by Patrick Laurie (UK Nature Writing). Suits readers interested in Scottish farming and landscape: Laurie works his family farm in Galloway with traditional Riggit Galloway cattle and records a rural way of life that is disappearing.

2019

• Wilding by Isabella Tree. Suits anyone interested in rewilding: Tree tells the story of the Knepp project in West Sussex, where free-roaming grazing animals were used to create new habitats for wildlife.

2018

• The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. Suits readers of walking memoirs: Winn's account of walking the 630-mile South West Coast Path with her husband, Moth, after the couple lost their home.

2016

• Common Ground by Rob Cowen. Suits readers who like nature writing close to home: after moving from London to Yorkshire, and before the birth of his first child, Cowen explores a patch of overlooked edge-land on the edge of town.

2015

• Running Free by Richard Askwith. Suits runners who prefer fields to pavements: a year of running in the Northamptonshire countryside, with practical tips on running off-road.

Children's categories

These are children's books; the ages given are the publishers' guidance.

• Leila and the Blue Fox by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (winner, 2023, Children's Writing on Nature and Conservation). For readers aged 9+, the publisher's age guidance: an illustrated novel in which Leila travels to find the mother who left her, alongside the journey of an Arctic fox based on a true story.
• Turtle Moon by Hannah Gold (shortlisted, 2025, Children's Wainwright Prize for Fiction). For readers aged 8+, the publisher's age guidance: Silver joins her father at a turtle rescue centre in Costa Rica and sets out to find a leatherback turtle's stolen eggs. Illustrated by Levi Pinfold.
• Spark by M. G. Leonard (shortlisted, 2023, Children's Writing on Nature and Conservation). For readers aged 9+, the publisher's age guidance: the second Twitchers mystery, in which Jack and his birdwatching friends investigate a wildlife crime; it can also be read on its own.

Questions people ask

What is the Wainwright Prize?

It is a set of UK book prizes for nature, conservation and environmental writing, established in 2013 and named after Alfred Wainwright. Since 2025 there have been six categories, including illustrated books and children's fiction, non-fiction and picture books.

Who was Alfred Wainwright?

A British author, illustrator and fellwalker, known for hand-drawn guides to 214 fells in the English Lake District, published between 1955 and 1966.

Why do some books say James Cropper or Thwaites?

Those are sponsors' names. The prize has been supported over the years by sponsors including Thwaites, Marston's Brewery and James Cropper, so older covers may use a sponsor's name.

Selected by Fox & Fable from books in stock. Last updated 30 September 2026.