Sir John Lister-Kaye

Sir John Lister-Kaye is one of Scotland’s best-known naturalists and conservationists. John came to live in the Highlands of Scotland in 1968 to work with the celebrated author and naturalist, Gavin Maxwell, of Ring of Bright Water fame. After Maxwell’s sudden death in 1969, John decided to commemorate Gavin’s work and writing by finishing the story of the Maxwell otters. This first book, published in 1972, is called The White Island.

The success of this book led to the creation of the first Field Studies Centre for the Highlands and Islands.  Since then, over 25,000 adults and 100,000 children have passed through the welcoming doors of Aigas Field Centre. In recent years the environmental education for schools programme independently run by the Aigas Trust (set up by John in 1980) has become the Highlands’ principal provider, handling some 5,000 school children every year.

In his bestseller, Song of the Rolling Earth (Little, Brown, 2003) now in its 10th reprint, and its sequel, Nature’s Child (Little, Brown, 2004), John celebrates his passion for nature and wildlife.  These books have been widely acclaimed; they were followed in 2010 by At The Water’s Edge (Canongate) and by Gods of the Morning (Canongate, 2015).

In 2001 John was awarded an OBE for services to nature conservation, and he has received honorary doctorates from two Scottish universities for his contribution to nature writing. In 2016 he was awarded the Royal Scottish Geographical Society’s Geddes Award for services to conservation, and made an honorary FRSGS.

John’s latest book, The Dun Cow Rib (Canongate, 2017), is a memoir of his boyhood and was shortlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize 2018. Later that year, John received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the RSPB’s Nature of Scotland’s Awards in Edinburgh. ‘No one writes more movingly, or with such transporting poetic skill’— Helen MacDonald.

His latest book Footprints in the Woods (Canongate, 2023) is an account of a year spent observing the comings and goings of otters, beavers, badgers, weasels and pine martens. This family – Mustelidae – all live in the wild at Aigas, the conservation and field study centre John calls home. With the patient and meticulous care of a true naturalist, John observes and records the lives, habits and habitats of these elusive animals.