The sheep stell : memoirs of a shepherd / Janet White.

First published in 1991. This revised edition published London : Constable, 2018.

With an introduction by Colin Thubron.

As a child in wartime England, Janet White decided that she wanted to live somewhere wild and supremely beautiful, to inhabit and work the landscape. She imagined searching the whole world for a place, high and remote as a sheep stell, quiet as a monastery - challenging and pristine... Janet has always tended sheep - first as a young girl in the Cheviots, then on an uninhabited island off New Zealand, with a bonfire as her only means of communication with the mainland. After a brutal attack, she was forced to leave her island and returned to England, where she married, became a smallholder in Sussex, and finally bought a hill farm in Somerset. Underpinning this account is Janet's attachment to the land, and her commitment to combine the principles of conservation with successful farming.