Output details

A Country Diary

A Country Diary is a feature on The Guardian which I have written weekly for 20 years. It is on the leader page of the print edition of The Guardian, and has run for over 100 years. It also has its own page on the Guardian website. The research questions which shape this detailed and almost devotional account of place are as follows. 1) How can a brief observation piece cover various overlapping areas of interest: natural history, landscape history, ecology, folklore, poetry, environmental philosophy, nature conservation, and narrative non-fiction? 2) How does the major subject consort with the discipline of the short pieces, around 300 words? Research is conducted through walking, observing and writing, as well as active research in reading, an ecological perspective and the challenge to articulate experience. These pieces are read in the UK and by English speakers world-wide, and letters from around the world and extensive online comments witness their substantial impact. Current circulation figures for the newspaper as a whole are (October 2013) 197,542 for the print edition (355,173 for the Saturday print edition) and online, 84,933,955 monthly unique browsers globally. This column will in future be worked into a compilation for publication. The full collection for 2013 up until 19/11/2013 is attached as a pdf, earlier editions can be found at: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/series/country-diary+profile/paulevans