No writer has described the everyday practical work of farming and the thoughts of a reflective farmer more convincingly than has Adrian Bell. He wrote in the tradition of Gilbert White, Richard Jefferies, and Thomas Hardy, although his work has a lighter touch and more humor than theirs. He began to write with no literary pretensions, but he quickly achieved critical recognition for the easy pace and constant variety of his work.

Adrian Hanbury Bell was born in London on 4 October 1901 to Robert Bell, a journalist, and Frances Hanbury Bell. After being educated at Uppingham School, he decided in his late teens to take up a career as a farmer in Suffolk. "I have ancestral roots in Suffolk on my mother's side," he wrote, "[her] forbears of a century ago were going about their work in the fields when Gainsborough was painting it." After spending a year as...