About the Author
Many readers and critics believe The Peregrine and The Hill of Summer are among the best books on nature written in the twentieth century.
The important exhibition Restless Brilliance – The Story of J A Baker and The Peregrine at Chelmsford Museum has come to an end. It ran from March 2024 to February 2025 and was the first time that items from the archive at the University of Essex had been put on public display. It was especially appropriate that it took place in Baker’s home town. For more information see Resources.
More has been learnt about the somewhat elusive Baker from visitors to the exhibition. These stories will add to our knowledge of a truly great writer. I was personally delighted to run a series of walks around Little Baddow and in Chelmsford, going along paths that would have been familiar to Baker. August 2026 will be the centenary of Baker’s birth and I hope that it will be possible to have a further exhibition.
On 18 December 2019, the BBC released a reading of The Peregrine by David Attenborough, the very well known broadcaster and natural historian. It was excellent listening and was available until December 2020 on the BBC website at BBC Radio 4. Information about the reading is still available on the site.
In 2010, both The Peregrine and The Hill of Summer were published in a combined volume by Collins, together with extracts from Baker’s diaries. This edition also includes extensive biographical information about Baker by Mark Cocker and John Fanshawe. A resized edition was published in 2015. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of The Peregrine in 1967, a new edition was published (ISBN 978-0008216214) in 2017. This edition includes a new ‘afterword’ by Robert Macfarlane.
Our understanding of J A Baker has been greatly increased by the publishing in October 2017 of My House of Sky by Hetty Saunders. As well as a very well researched biography, the book includes a selection of his poetry, an introduction by John Fanshawe to, and photographs of, items in the J A Baker Archive at the University of Essex and photographs of locations in Baker Country by Christopher Matthews. My House of Sky is published by Little Toller Books and is a must for anyone with an interest in J A Baker – ISBN 978-1-908213-49-5.