Richard Thomas Mabey (born 20 February 1941) is a writer and broadcaster, chiefly on the relations between nature and culture. Education Mabey was educated at three independent schools, all in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. The first was at Rothesay School, followed by Berkhamsted Preparatory School and then Berkhamsted School. He then went to St Catherine's College at the University of Oxford where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Life and work After Oxford, Mabey worked as a lecturer in Social Studies in Further Education at Dacorum College, Hemel Hempstead, then as a senior editor at Penguin Books. He became a full-time writer in 1974. He spent most of his life among the beechwoods of the Chilterns. He now lives in the Waveney Valley in Norfolk, with his partner Polly Lavender, and retreats to a boat on the Norfolk Broads. He appeared in a 1975 episode of the BBC Television series The World About Us, "In Deepest Britain", with John Gooders and other naturalists, giving an unscripted narration of the wildlife observed during a country walk. He wrote and presented later episodes of the series, including "The Unofficial Countryside" (1975), "The Flowering of Britain" (1980) and "A Prospect of Kew", about Kew Gardens (1981). "The Unofficial Countryside" and "The Flowering of Britain" were based on his books of the same names. He also wrote and narrated the 1996 BBC television series Postcards from the Country, for whose eight, 40-minute episodes he was series producer, as well as being the producer-director on four. The book of the series Postcards from the Country: living memories of the British countryside (by Peter Marren and Mike Birkhead) includes a foreword by Mabey. "White Rock, Black Water" (1985) was a specially-written epidote of the series The Natural World, about the limestone country of the Yorkshire Dales, and a Channel 4 eight-part series – Back to the Roots – explored the role of plants in Britain's contemporary culture. In the 1990s he often appeared on the BBC's Country File. Between 1982 and 1986 he sat on the UK government's advisory body, the Nature Conservancy Council. Mabey writes regularly for The Guardian, the New Statesman, The Times and Granta. A selection of these writings was compiled as the book Country Matters. He has written a personal column in BBC Wildlife magazine since 1984, and a selection of these columns has been published as A Brush with Nature. Between 2000 and