Helen Beatrix Potter was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She is best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
John Kingsley Orton, known by the pen name of Joe Orton, was an English playwright, author, and diarist. His public career, from 1964 until his death in 1967, was short but highly influential. During this brief period he shocked, outraged, and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies. The adjective Ortonesque refers to work characterised by a similarly dark yet farcical cynicism.
The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes, forests, and mountains, and its associations with William Wordsworth and other Lake Poets and also with Beatrix Potter and John Ruskin. The Lake District National Park was established in 1951 and covers an area of 2,362 square kilometres (912 sq mi). It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017.
Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, fibre, milk, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, selective breeding, and the raising of livestock. Husbandry has a long history, starting with the Neolithic Revolution when animals were first domesticated, from around 13,000 BC onwards, predating farming of the first crops. By the time of early civilisations such as ancient Egypt, cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs were being raised on farms.
James Hogg was a Scottish poet, novelist and essayist who wrote in both Scots and English. As a young man he worked as a shepherd and farmhand, and was largely self-educated through reading. He was a friend of many of the great writers of his day, including Sir Walter Scott, of whom he later wrote an unauthorised biography. He became widely known as the "Ettrick Shepherd", a nickname under which some of his works were published, and the character name he was given in the widely read series Noctes Ambrosianae, published in Blackwood's Magazine. He is best known today for his novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. His other works include the long poem The Queen's Wake (1813), his collection of songs Jacobite Relics (1819), and his two novels The Three Perils of Man (1822), and The Three Perils of Woman (1823).
Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in Cornhill Magazine, where it gained a wide readership.
Keswick is a market town and civil parish in the Allerdale Borough in Cumbria, England. Historically, until 1974, it was part of Cumberland. It lies within the Lake District National Park, Keswick is just north of Derwentwater and is four miles from Bassenthwaite Lake. It had a population of 5,243 at the 2011 census.
Sandra Birgitte Toksvig is a Danish-British writer, comedian and broadcaster on British radio, stage and television. She is also a political activist, having co-founded the Women's Equality Party in 2015. She has written plays, novels and books for children. In 1994, she came out as a lesbian.
The Herdwick is a breed of domestic sheep native to the Lake District in North West England. The name "Herdwick" is derived from the Old Norse herdvyck, meaning sheep pasture. Though low in lambing capacity and perceived wool quality when compared to more common commercial breeds, Herdwicks are prized for their robust health, their ability to live solely on forage, and their tendency to be territorial and not to stray over the difficult upland terrain of the Lake District. It is considered that up to 99% of all Herdwick sheep are commercially farmed in the central and western Lake District.
Sheep farming or sheep husbandry is the raising and breeding of domestic sheep. It is a branch of animal husbandry. Sheep are raised principally for their meat, milk, and fiber (wool). They also yield sheepskin and parchment.
The Man Who Planted Trees is a short story published in 1953 by French author Jean Giono. An allegorical tale, it tells the story of one shepherd's long and successful single-handed effort to re-forest a desolate valley in the foothills of the Alps in Provence throughout the first half of the 20th century. It was written in French, but first published in English.
Lee David Ingleby is an English film, television and stage actor.
Tobias Simpson Menzies is an English stage, television and film actor. He is known for playing Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in the third and fourth seasons of Netflix's series The Crown, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series and received Golden Globe and British Academy Television Award nominations. Menzies also played Frank and Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall in STARZ's Outlander, for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination, in addition to his roles as Brutus in HBO's Rome and Edmure Tully in HBO's Game of Thrones.
Swallows and Amazons is a children's adventure novel by English author Arthur Ransome and first published on 21 July 1930 by Jonathan Cape. Set in the summer of 1929 in the Lake District, the book introduces the main characters of John, Susan, Titty and Roger Walker (Swallows); as well as their mother, Mary; and their baby sister, Bridget. We also meet Nancy and Peggy Blackett (Amazons); their uncle Jim, commonly referred to as Captain Flint; and their widowed mother, Molly Blackett. It is the first book in the Swallows and Amazons series, followed by Swallowdale.
War Horse is a play based on the book of the same name by writer Michael Morpurgo, adapted for stage by Nick Stafford. Originally Morpurgo thought "they must be mad" to try to make a play from his best-selling 1982 novel; but the play was a great success. The play's West End and Broadway productions are directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris; it features life-size horse puppets by the Handspring Puppet Company of South Africa, the movements of which were choreographed by Toby Sedgwick.
Livestock are the domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to provide labor and produce commodities such as meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to animals who are raised for consumption, and sometimes used to refer solely to farmed ruminants, such as cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. Horses are considered livestock in the United States. The USDA classifies pork, veal, beef, and lamb (mutton) as livestock, and all livestock as red meat. Poultry and fish are not included in the category.
Adam John Lincoln Henson is an English farmer, author and television presenter.
James Rebanks is an English sheep farmer and author, from Matterdale in Cumbria. His first book, The Shepherd's Life, was published in 2015, and he published English Pastoral in 2020. He also published The Illustrated Herdwick Shepherd in 2015 and The Shepherd's View: Modern Photographs from an Ancient Landscape in 2016.
Clarkson's Farm is a British television documentary series about Jeremy Clarkson and his farm in the Cotswolds. It was first broadcast by Amazon Prime Video on 11 June 2021. The series documents Clarkson's attempts at running a 1,000 acres (400 ha) farm in the Cotswolds, and it has received largely positive reviews. In July 2021, the series was renewed for a second season.
