A DEVON man has won a prestigious literary prize.

Writer and environmental campaigner, Guy Shrubsole, has won the 2023 James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Writing on Conservation.

Guy’s book ‘The Lost Rainforests of Britain’ has been described as a ‘highly original’ story of our forgotten temperate rainforests, and the efforts to restore and protect them.

Inspired by a chance discovery of a surviving fragment of rainforest on the edge of Dartmoor, Shrubsole explores these spectacular lost worlds across the UK, offering ‘powerful ideas and hope’ about how they might be bought back to life, and inspiring connection with these magical places.

Chairman of Judges, Craig Bennett, Chief Executive of The Wildlife Trusts, said: ‘A highly original, meticulously researched and beautifully written book which takes the reader on a thrilling journey to one of the rarest, most precious habitats to be found in Britain, while also offering some powerful ideas and hope about how the decline of these majestic rainforests might be reversed.

‘Shrubsole’s inquisitive, determined, passionate personality shines through, and offers the reader education, inspiration and entertainment from start to finish.’

Guy has worked for Rewilding Britain and Friends of the Earth, the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and New Zealand’s Ministry of Agriculture, and has written extensively for national press.

His book Who Owns England? was a Sunday Times bestseller.

Guy is campaigning for Government action to protect and restore Britain’s temperate rainforest through the Lost Rainforests of Britain campaign.

The James Cropper Wainwright Prize is awarded annually to the books which most successfully inspire readers to explore the outdoors and to nurture a respect for the natural world, with the winners announced at the Prize’s 10th Anniversary celebrations in Kendal in the Lake District.