The Dun Cow Rib: A Very Natural Childhood

by John Lister-Kaye

John Lister-Kaye has spent a lifetime exploring, protecting and celebrating the British landscape and its creatures. His memoir The Dun Cow Rib is the story of a boy's awakening to the wonders of the natural world. Lister-Kaye's joyous childhood holidays - spent scrambling through hedges and ditches after birds and small beasts, keeping pigeons in the loft and tracking foxes around the edge of the garden - were the perfect apprenticeship for his two lifelong passions: exploring the wonders of nature, and writing about them. Threaded through his adventures - from moving to the Scottish Highlands to work with Gavin Maxwell, to founding the famous Aigas Field Centre - is an elegy to his remarkable mother, and a wise and affectionate celebration of Britain's natural landscape.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Memoir, Scotland, Biography Memoir, Natural History, Animals

368 pages, Hardcover

First published August 17, 2017

About the author

Sir John Philip Lister Lister-Kaye, 8th Baronet, OBE (b. 1946) is an English naturalist, conservationist, author who is owner and director of the Aigas Field Centre, among other business interests. He is married with four children and has lived in the Highlands of Scotland since 1969.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the last 40 years, John Lister-Kaye has run the Aigas Field Centre, an old Georgian manor house just to the west of Inverness and set in the beautiful highland landscape. Lister-Kaye discovered the place in the mid-1970's and since then has made this a world leading and award-winning centre for environmental education. This latest book, The Dun Cow Rib tells the story of the long and winding route that he took to get there.

Born in 1959 to John and Helen, he was the latest member of an ancient family were landowners in Yorkshire with active financial interests in mining and quarries. He had a fairly happy childhood playing in the local countryside and keeping pigeons until he was sent to boarding school. He really could not get along with the head there. After a couple of incidents, one of which was a prank, the other of which was nothing to do with him, he was asked to leave, much to his father's fury at the school and the head in particular. This meant that he had to go to another school and fortunately he ended up at Allhallows School on the Devon and Dorset border. For Lister-Kaye this was a lucky break as he was right on the doorstep of Lyme Regis and the wilderness that was the undercliff. He joined the natural history society and by the time he finished at the school, he was totally and utterly in love with the natural world.

He longed to do something in the natural world, but his father lent on him heavily to accept a post at a steelworks as a management trainee. He did go and hated it, turning more against working in unsustainable industries after the massive oil spill in the Isles of Scilly in 1967. Shortly after that, an opportunity arose to work with the now famous author Gavin Maxwell on a book on mammals and opening a zoo on Skye; he quit and moved to Scotland. Both projects were abandoned after Maxwell was diagnosed with cancer and died after a short illness. The thought of going by to a desk job was too much to bear, so he stayed in Scotland and wrote The White Island, a book about the short but intense time spent with Maxwell. From the book came another opportunity and Highland Wildlife Enterprise was formed with the help of Richard Frere and this was what was to become the Aigas Field Centre.

I quite liked this book, he writes in an interesting and entertaining way about all the events in his early life and it is full of amusing anecdotes and snippets. He had a privileged upbringing, he is a baronet after all, and he loved growing up with his grandparents at the manor house where the Dun Cow Rib was always hanging from a chain. He had a distant relationship with his father but was much closer to his mother. She suffered from severe health problems with her heart, caused by an illness when she was a child and exacerbated when she gave birth to John and managed to live much longer because of the efforts of Paul Wood and Russel Brock, two cardiologists who worked at the cutting edge of heart surgery, this book is a tribute to her from him. Having read the Douglas Botting book in the last month, it was useful to find out his side of the story of his brief work with Gavin Maxwell too. I have only read one other of his, The Gods of the Morning, and will be adding some of his others to my reading list.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is easily the best non-fiction book I’ve read in 2017, I can’t believe it could be surpassed. When a truly talented writer decides to write their childhood memoirs this is the book you end up with. I’m not a fan of memoirs but I a massive fan of nature and books that have been written about it, when I saw one of the big names had written about his childhood and how he became obsessed with nature I just had to read it. I was not expecting it to hit me as hard as it did emotionally, I became so engrossed I think for a while I lost track of reality, each hardship got me down, each uplifting moment had me grinning like an idiot and each death left me feeling hollow. I was on the edge of my seat reading about his antics as a kid at boarding school, the scene with peacock feathers was pure class.

The book takes us through the first 20 years of John’s life, I found it interesting to read about the events that shaped his from finding a dead dog, running wild exploring the woods, having near misses with foxes and his experiences at school. And then once he finishes school his career takes a change, an amazing chance meeting with Terry Nutkins leads him to then meeting with Gavin Maxwell (The Ring of Bright Water chap) and the rest as they say is history. Terry Nutkins was my hero when I was a kid, I find it amazing that John had him as a roommate. Brilliant.

Blog review is here https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2017...

[Penny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pleasant but slightly lacklustre account of the author's upper middle class upbringing in rural middle England. I'm probably damning it with faint praise, but so be it. The best part by far is the nature writing.

I always have a slight problem with people recounting dialogue from 60 years ago - I'd far rather have the gist of the event than 'made up' speeches. 

Lister-Kaye adored his mother who suffered from a young age with a debilitating illness. But his description of her as perfection itself did, I'm sorry to say, get a little cloying.

His description of himself as a mischievous child who always seemed to find himself accidentally in the thick of it struck me as a little disingenuous!

After all, how could he 'accidentally' get up at the crack of dawn, sneak into an out of bounds room in his grandfather's house, take down an antique sword, go out into the grounds and decapitate the prize cockerel! Of course his argument was 'he didn't mean to'!

[Kirsty · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Lister-Kaye was a new-to-me author when I picked up The Dun Cow Rib, a memoir of his English childhood, which was spent 'scrambling through hedges... keeping pigeons in the loft and tracking foxes around the edge of the garden.' In his foreword, Lister-Kaye writes about his present life in the Scottish Highlands, in which a self-built hut has become 'a treasured centre of separateness, a place to muse, an escape.' He embarked upon the writing of this book in the hope that he could discover what first gave him such an enduring interest in the natural world.

His 1950s childhood sounds rather lonely, although he insists it was not. During the holidays, he would go and stay with his grandparents in the Manor House in rural Warwickshire, his father's country pile 'to which we always gravitated as surely as bees return to their hive, however far afield the capricious winds of fortune had wafted us.' Here, he remembers spending a lot of time by himself in the garden, with its 'rampant, inexhaustible verdure'. This was a privileged existence; the house had many rooms to explore, and a full retinue of servants.

The prose is very descriptive, and rather lyrical, but it does verge upon sickly at times. The structure, however, is where the book is let down. The narrative jumps around a lot from one idea to another, or from one time period to the next, and then back again. The motifs and images tend to become rather repetitive too. I would have definitely enjoyed this memoir more had it focused more upon his childhood - and perhaps less upon the many boarding school japes - and had it a chronological narrative. The Dun Cow Rib is also not exclusively a memoir of childhood, which I feel is a little misleading; Lister-Kaye writes about the lives of his parents, and moving to the Highlands to work with Gavin Maxwell, for instance. There are also whole chapters to be found here which fail to mention the natural world at all.

I did not know what to expect from Lister-Kaye's writing, but I was hoping that I might enjoy it more than I did. On the whole, this was pleasant enough, but it is not overly relatable, given the privilege of his upbringing. In the past, I have been blown away by a lot of the nature writers I have discovered, but I cannot say the same for this fellow. Perhaps this is not the best of his books to begin with, but I do not feel overly compelled to reach for any others.

[Eisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I had yet to learn that the world constantly moves on, that change is life's inescapable yoke."
I was deterred from reading it because of bad reviews, and it stayed on my shelf collecting dust for a very long time. But I finally decided to read it after randomly opening the book and reading a few pages while contemplating whether to donate it or not. Beautifully written. Having spent a childhood close to nature and with very constant family traditions, this was a lovely read. It felt like i was in all those places described. The beauty of having an ancestral home and belonging somewhere, blissful ignorance about change and growing up. The loss of a grandparent, of a whole world, that ceases to exist once they are gone. Growing up, finding your own way, making a home and having the best time of your life stored away as fond childhood memories; the book was extremely nostalgic and emotionally charging for me.
4/5 stars, would definitely read it again!

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely and at times very wise autobiography of John Lister-Kaye. His accounts of the various schools he attended, along with memories of his mothers declining health, make this, for me, a top notch memoir.

[Ginni · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lyrical and moving autobiography which describes how John Lister-Kaye came to be such a talented writer and naturalist. It is also an account of a privileged and largely vanished world, that of the English country house and its inhabitants, and the rich and glorious countryside that still existed after the Second World War. I read this very quickly and easily, and remembered in the last section of the book that I too read and been moved by ‘Ring of Bright Water’, when I was younger than the author. I will now look out for other books by this writer. I was given this one last Christmas, and I found the title is rather off-putting, as I couldn’t imagine what it referred to. The explanation does come in the early chapters of the book; these were rather heavy handed in description and scene setting, but as the Manor House and its setting are crucial to an understanding of the author and his childhood, I suppose this was necessary. All in all, though, I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very charming stories of an upbringing outdoors and in the wilderness of the English countryside, how it inspired a lifelong passion for nature. I loved the stories of schooldays, boarding school, and the author’s relationships with his parents and grandfather.

[Natalie (CuriousReader)]

My Video Review: https://youtu.be/8949OVw6KEE
Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize 2018.

[Julie Gs · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fascinating book, an insight into a 1940/1950 country lovers childhood.

[Shiloah · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a riveting story! Lots of funny moments, tender, shocking, sad, and overall memorable. At the end, I could really identify with his father’s character and relationship with his mother. That his family was his whole life and his wife all he wanted to spent time and activities with is a lot like my husband, father of 11 and my best friend. This is definitely one that will stay with me.

[Anastasia · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a lover of memoirs and natural history, I really wanted to enjoy this book.

The writing jumped from one idea to the next, making it difficult to keep track at times. The lengthy passages about the author’s mother’s heart condition were entirely uninteresting.

But most of all I disliked the way the author writes about animals and how death is a huge theme. Some instances are simply the cause of nature. Others are entirely the cause of humans - a dog shot in the head, a cockerel being beheaded, a woodlouse smashed by a book, a harmless grass snake being beaten to death with a cricket back, the author admitting how he longed to be in a fox hunt. And all written in lengthy and graphic detail. Maybe it should serve as a lesson of how we are ruining the landscapes in which we live. However I found it wholly disturbing - not only the writing but the way in which Lister-Kaye was fascinated by the demise of his cherished wildlife.

For me this was a typical look into a middle class baby boomer Britain where everything is at human disposal.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t quite connect with this one - despite some beautiful passages describing the countryside, wildlife & the authors almost idyllic childhood. Read as part of non-fiction November :)

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know 'of' Sir John Lister-Kaye, a well regarded conservationist and founder of the Aigas Centre which has featured in BBC Winterwatch, but not really much about him. This autobiography of his childhood and young adulthood is not just about the beginnings of his interest in nature which has led to a career in the field.

The book is not entirely linear and the timeline can be difficult to pick through.

There is much about the illness of his mother - a reminder of the long reach that 'trivial' infectious illness can have, with her life limited and shortened by its sequelae (and he living with the a perception that he had almost killed her and permanently harmed her through his gestation and birth) Another reviewer has described a 'cloying' quality to this element of the book - I don't think I would go that far (and appreciate why it would be if it did) but it was rather hard to get a grasp of her as a character rather than a shadowy presence, or an absence (I was quite startled to find how long into her children's life she lived), not from what he shows us rather than tells us. The descriptions of the medical care and the cardiology of the twentieth century were interesting. I can't really imagine a Somerset GP today being in a position to accompany a patient to a consultation in London.

His childhood was however privileged - coming from a long established landed family with interests in mining and quarrying. He doesn't quite spell out all the complications - there are several references to 'the abysmal politics of the day' and elsewhere to the nationalisation of the coal industry which was not financially welcome to them. There are allegiances to Yorkshire, Warwickshire and Somerset... which multiple perhaps detracts a little from the empathy which can be afforded by the average reader, but it was remarkable to read, for example, of the huge community turnout for certain family funerals. He spends some time attending the village school after a brutal time at a prep school, and he is happy there (although there is a hint about educational standards which perhaps does make the decision to move him on more understandable on more than class grounds) I learned a few interesting things about the private education system (and was reminded that school uniform at state primary level is a 21st century fancy)

Some of his behaviour and perhaps even attitudes reminds me of Jeremy Clarkson and his family - the resentments at the impact of wider economic events on their privileges, the unruly personal behaviour in the context of a very ill family member. (I wonder what the happenstances of Lister-Kaye's schooling conferred on Clarkson might have made of him) There are lots more happenstances which lead to his connection with Gavin Maxwell, to whom it appears he owes his escape from parentally approved work in a highly industrialised sector, with lots of unromantic detail such as the various miserable deaths of elderly grumpy otters.

[Eustacia Tan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I found this book when I was looking for books about the English countryside (which reminds me, I need to get back to the Fairacre series!) For some reason, it languished on my TBR list until last week, when I was browsing through Overdrive and realised that I wishlisted the book.

The Dun Cow Rib takes its title from a huge bone in John Lister-Kaye’s ancestral home. It’s supposedly the rib of the Dun Cow (though it is not), which is supposed to be some giant fearsome cow. Given that the title is about a mythical beast, it’s probably no surprise to hear that this book is about nature. It’s the story of Lister-Kaye’s childhood and how he came to fall in love with animals, leading to his work in conservation and the Aigas Field Center.

This is definitely a childhood experience that most people won’t have. Apart from the fact that times have changed, Lister-Kaye is also the son of a Baron, which means that his childhood is probably not similar even to most British people of his time. The ancestral home that I mentioned was huge and the attitudes of his family definitely played a part in allowing him to develop his love of nature.

To me, The Dun Cow Rib is an excellent example of the power of books. I’m never going to have the experience Lister-Kaye has and I’m probably never going to know people who had that kind of childhood either. But, by reading his autobiography, I can get a glimpse into his life and his way of thinking – it’s practically a kind of magic to be able to walk in someone’s shoes that way. While I like animals (and was a kid’s member of WWF and always eagerly waited for the inserts to learn about the latest animal), I’ve never been passionate about them like Lister-Kaye has. And it was in reading his passion and his experience that I managed to have an understanding of why people can fall in love so deeply with the natural world that they will spend their life trying to undo the damage that mankind has done.

Apart from the fantastic descriptions of the natural world, I also appreciated the glimpse into the life of upper-society Britain. His mother was a tragic figure, but her love and good heart shone through. It’s clear that despite her poor health, she never victimised or pitied herself, but instead was the emotional pillar of the family. The different schools that Lister-Kaye went to were interesting as well, since many of them were boarding schools and I have always been curious about them since reading about them in Enid Blyton.

Overall, I really enjoyed this. It’s written in a beautiful and entertaining style that brought me into the British countryside of quite a few years back. I’d definitely recommend this to people who love nature and/or biographies.

This review was first posted at Eustea Reads

[Isabella · Rating 5 out of 5]

I positively inhaled this book! I honestly did not expect to be as gripped by it as I was -- I thought it would be an interesting read to plod through for the sake of my love of the English countryside, but it turned out to be much more. The writing was evocative and nostalgic, really bringing to life a time period I was not alive to see. I adored every chapter, rife with charming detail. Lister-Kaye's love of the natural world is infectious and delightful, and I'm deeply jealous of his childhood. Honestly, reading this book just made me very, very happy. It's a celebration of British heritage and wildlife, chock-full of heart and thick slabs of buttered toast. I think I shall be revisiting it for years to come.

[Dronerg · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's taken me a year to wade through this book. I honestly felt the author was trying to use as many big or obscure words as he could, for effect. I pride myself on having had a good English education, but I had not heard of some of the words he used, in my opinion, completely unnecessarily.

I could not get engrossed in this book at all. I'd just start to get absorbed in a recollection and off it would go at a tangent. I won't be reading any more books by John Lister-Kaye. Far too wordy and I only finished it because it was a gift. There were parts I enjoyed, hence the 3 stars, but instead of enjoying reading, I found this a chore and found myself saying aloud, "Thank goodness that's finished", tonight, as I closed the cover. Now to find a better book. Hurray.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I seem to be in a groove of reading about people who are deeply involved in nature. Much of this book is based around where I grew up - Ryton and Dunsmore are familiar places. The tale is of another world, post-war but still upper-class and aware of historical connections. I find that aspect hard to swallow. But I loved the tale of the not-particularly-academic boy who works his way through various schools before happening upon one that suits him perfectly. The brave decisions (foolish?) decisions he made as an adult to set up his dream wildlife - inspiring. This is how big things happen - by not thinking too much about the details but by taking one step at a time towards the dream.

[Nash · Rating 5 out of 5]

How is it that every one of his novels are equally good and gripping? Ugh!! I could read this over and over. This book not only takes me back to the Scottish highlands but also makes me want to lose myself in the same world described by the author so eloquently where nature is able to co-exist peacefully with humans that truly appreciate its grandeur without spoiling it completely. Learning a bit more about his childhood, (tidbits shared here and there in many of his novels) that reflect the reasons behind who he came to be, is an added bonus.

As always, on my top five best reads.

[Gem ~ · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nostalgic read not only about recent British natural history but also about childhood in the 50's, boarding schools, manor houses and countryside ways of life. The devotion to his mother really shines through in a very personal and prophetic way through the memoirs which I found highly moving. If you've enjoyed other natural childhood memoirs like Chris Packham's or books such as Ring of Bright Water I highly recommend this.

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and compelling tale revealing the roots of JLKS deep connection with nature and conservation. Further to this, reading this book was pleasant walk down memory lane, as despite growing up 50 years apart, this book exposed many parallels between my childhood and the authors.

[Deborah Compton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly engaging read! I met the author before reading the book while staying at the House of Aigas during a week-long study.
The book brought Sir John's childhood and his current passions to life.

[Gwen Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. An honest report of what it was like to grow up in a simpler more innocent time. It was interesting to learn more about Gavin Maxwell too and how the author was inspired to set-up The Aigas Field Centre which has been added to my bucket list.

[Chris Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did enjoy this though it seems to have taken me a very long time to read, not sure why. Well written but didn't quite enthral me.

[Dominic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful

[MsEleanorMae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful. What a writer!

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book so fare this year

[Dutchbaby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely, evocative memoir of growing up in mid-century England.

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The audio book is narrated wonderfully, thoroughly enjoyable.

[Aubrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

love