Simon Cooper
AUTHOR

Simon Cooper

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After nearly half a lifetime, I am opening my gates to one of England's most enchanting landscapes in my new book. Tales from The Mill brings together my journals and observations from living, working and restoring Nether Wallop Mill, an ancient water mill in rural Hampshire that predates the Domesday Book. I weave together natural history, memoir and community life and demonstrate how this rare river habitat is increasingly under threat. Structured around the four seasons, Tales from The Mill poignantly follows the rhythms of weather and water, the daily arrival and disappearance of wild residents, and the challenges of being the custodian of a rare chalkstream and the thousand-year-old mill it powers. I recount first hearing about the ‘run down’ mill from a friend and undertaking a two-year restoration project that stretched far longer and cost more than anticipated. The mill which is surrounded by water on all sides is accompanied by the noise of pounding water, which has become the soundtrack of my life. The book is rich with stories about the local wildlife: we meet otters including Kuschta (heroine of my second book The Otters’ Tale) and her pups whose nightly visits strip a trout stock from 100 to 17; a monstrous rainbow trout nicknamed the Wallop Gulper; Arthur the Arthritic swan; the water voles who are being slowly reintroduced to the Brook transported in Pringles tubes; the brown hare whose population has plummeted and the bird battle zone: where the swans persecute the geese, the geese persecute the ducks and the ducks persecute the moorhens. This book is a distillation of all those writings during my years at The Mill. It is a place I dearly love, but not as much as the nature, water and creatures that inhabit it, all of whom are the living incarnation of what is the wondrousness of the English countryside. I hope you enjoy reading of their lives as much as I have enjoyed living as part of their lives. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Simon Cooper has lived and worked at Nether Wallop Mill for over half his adult life as a professional fly fisher and chalkstream conservationist. The Mill is his home, office and writing studio that he shares with his family, plus a multitude of fish, otters, kingfishers and the whole panoply of wildlife that likes to call a chalkstream home. Simon is also the author of Life of a Chalkstream, The Otters’ Tale, which was the runner-up for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing, and Frankel, which was shortlisted for The Telegraph Sports Book Awards. Simon has been a regular contributor and columnist for Trout & Salmon, The Spectator, Country Life, The Field, the Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, writing about nature, fishing, rivers and the politics of river pollution.
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  • The Otters' Tale cover art

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  • Frankel cover art

    • Frankel

    • The Greatest Racehorse of All Time and the Sport That Made Him
    • By: Simon Cooper
    • Narrated by: Rupert Bush
    • Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
    • Release date: 06-08-20
    • Language: English
    • 29 ratings

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