James Rebanks talks to Dinah Rose

Farmer and author James Rebanks explains how he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to spend a season with an ageing duck farmer and what it taught him about self-knowledge and forgiveness. And he reflects on his own life as a Lake District farmer and on the award-winning books it has inspired.

Rebanks first met the old woman caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down on a remote Norwegian island many years ago. He says he couldn’t stop thinking about this fierce and otherworldly lady who felt strangely familiar. Years later he travelled back to spend a season witnessing her and working with her as her health failed. He recounts the story of a unique and ancient landscape, of toil in a bitter winter and of the elation of an endless summer when the birds leave behind their precious down.

Rebanks’s family have worked as farmers in the Lake District for more than 600 years. His bestselling first book, The Shepherd’s Life, won the Lake District Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Wainwright and Ondaatje prizes. His second, English Pastoral, was hailed as a masterpiece by the New Statesman. Here he talks to the President of Magdalen College, Dinah Rose.

Last year’s President of Magdalen lecture was given by Lord William Hague.