IF I look to the right while at my desk there are shelves upon shelves of books, read and unread. There are classics (Peter Scott’s ), favourites (Simon Blow’s ), treatises on hunting, shooting, tweed and English history. There is fishing, stalking and Scottish dancing; gunmaking, horse racing and botany. Some Hemingway, Mitford and a well-thumbed murder mystery. Books are a smorgasbord; they make up our world like a slightly dysfunctional family, but together they form an essential backdrop. What rarely finds its place on my shelves is what one might traditionally call nature writing, much of which isroom, so frustrating I found its inability to connect with the real nature of nature. This writing competition is for true nature writers. Those with a passion for the countryside and the flora and fauna herein. has long celebrated the best of those writers. The key to nature writing, as I see it, is to understand it in all its visceral tooth and claw, and embrace it anyway. Alexandra Henton,
