Well-known and award-winning nature writers and environmental activists join together in a new force for nature

Inkpen nature writer and activist Nicola Chester takes the fight to the online Wild Service Book Club discussion of local incidences of how we can work as a community to include and help save nature for the good of all, writes Arts Editor TRISH LEE

Wild Service – Why Nature Needs You is a book by a collection of established and new writers, as part of or inspired by the new Right to Roam movement, which was founded by West Berkshire’s bestselling author, artist and campaigner Nick Hayes (The Book of Trespass, The Trespasser’s Companion) and award-winning and bestselling author and environmental campaigner Guy Shrubsole (Who Owns England, The Lost Rainforests, The Lie of the Land – which comes out on Thursday) who grew up in Newbury.

The movement aims to secure responsible, informed and greater access to the countryside.

The group has grown to encompass well-known and award-winning nature writers and environmental activists in a modern Bloomsbury-style (“... without the relationships!” says Nicola) movement.

The Wild Service Book Club is an online discussion with each of its 13 writers on their particular theme.

Last Thursday, as part seven of the Wild Service Bookclub, Inkpen nature writer and activist Nicola Chester discussed hers – Community – with author and campaigner Sophie Pavelle and Guy Shrubsole in a ‘chapter’ on YouTube, featuring local incidences of how we can work as a community to include and help save nature for the good of all – including Hungerford’s Swift Town project and Inkpen Lapwing Story.

You can catch up with it here: https://tinyurl.com/4ta3mdsh

Nick Hayes and Nicola Chester have both written award-winning books and have been shortlisted and highly commended for the Wainwright Nature Writing Prize, and Amy-Jane Beer of the group and Guy Shrubsole both won their categories of the Wainwright Prize this year.

It was dubbed ‘the Wainwright to Roam Prize’.

“The movement has inspired other groups and Wild Service is a kind of manifesto for why we need a new connection to nature and how we can do it,” says Nicola.

“Wild Service is a collection of essays, an ‘all-star ensemble piece’, around the thinking behind why a new connection with nature, one that gives back, is needed.

“Edited by Nick Hayes and Jon Moses, it includes radical new writing on different themes from authors such as Nick Hayes, Guy Shrubsole, Amy-Jane Beer, Nadia Shaikh, award-winning singer, songwriter, author Sam Lee (The Book of the Nightingale) and high-profile environmental barrister and founder of Law For Nature Paul Powesland.

“It’s beautifully illustrated by Nick Hayes and was launched at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square this spring.”

It’s a busy time for Nicola, who is the former NWN Nature Notes columnist.

She has appeared on a panel at Global Birdfair with Lucy Lapwing, Amy-Jane Beer, Nadia Shaikh and will be at Wimbledon Book Fest with Sam Lee and Jon Moses next month.

Wild Service is the third anthology Nicola has appeared in this year – the other two are Under the Changing Skies, the Best of The Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024, edited by Paul Fleckney with an introduction

by Ian McMillan (Faber, out September 26) and Kin, A Celebration of Romany, Traveller and Nomadic Women’s Poetry, Story and Art (Salmon Poetry, out September 27)

in which she has a piece of memoir prose.

She will also be judging the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize sponsored by Climate Spring and with a prize of £10,000, along with Tori Tsui, David Lindo, Madeleine Bunting and Andy Fryers.

It was launched at Hay Festival this year and Nicola is currently reading for the longlist, which will be announced later this autumn.

As well as being an ambassador for the new Kennet Valley Wetland Reserve in Hungerford and a Rewild Yourself Champion, Nicola is well into writing her next book, which she says will be locally based, but with wider messages.

We look forward to its publication.