The British Landscape Club

Post-Easter greetings from the warm, sun-lit offices of the BLC.

This is a quick intrusion into your inbox by way of a thank-you to everyone who voted for The Lie of the Land in the People's Book Prize. Thank-you. The book has now been shortlisted and a further vote will occur in June in order to decide on the winners.

And now a further request of a similar kind. The Daily Telegraph are running a book campaign with the National Trust to pick the best 6 'outdoors books' published since January 2010. The winners are to be announced at the Hay-on-Wye lit fest and will be henceforth stocked at Trust gift shops and given some kind of sticker.

Here's the story from the Telegraph; the Peter Parker piece alluded to in it mentions The Lie of the Land in passing but, unfortunately, casts little light on his life as a radioactive spider:

Britons have been writing and reading about the joys of the outdoors for centuries. To put this genre of writing on the map, The Telegraph and the National Trust are inviting you to vote for your favourite 'outdoors' book.

We are asking enthusiasts for all types of writing about nature and the outdoors to nominate their choice for Outdoors Book of the Year. It can be fact or fiction, prose or poetry and could cover subjects ranging from gardening, to travel, to extreme sports and everything in between -- the only constraint is that it must have been published since January 2010. Inside Review on April 23, we have a piece by Peter Parker about the genre of nature writing, and one by Ivo Dawnay of the National Trust. We also have 10 writers and celebrities recommending their choice of book.
You can vote for your favourite book at www.nationaltrust.org.uk. The six most popular books will be carried in a selected number of National Trust shops and will display the 'National Trust/Hay Outdoors Books of the Year 2011' logo.  

Everybody is cordially implored to consider adding The Lie of the Land to the nominations, which actually appear to be less like nominations and more like votes. Better still, unlike the People’s Book Prize, there’s no registration required at all, so feel free to pass it around at will and many thanks in advance.

Ian