The Sheperd's life: Oxford student who didn't follow the flock and says breeding from the best rams is more intellectually challenging than much of what he studied

It is the enlightening, exquisitely written account, give or take a few autobiographical tangents, of a year in the life of James Rebanks (pictured), whose family has been farming in the Lake District for at least six centuries. He was born into a job from which, now in his 40s, he takes infinite pride. All the same, it is no life for the faint-hearted. Every year, spring and autumn feel like flimsy bookends to a long, harsh winter, and his Herdwick sheep - descended, he thinks, from animals that arrived with the Vikings - are built for the fells in ways that even the hardiest shepherds are not.