Of the Land and the Spirit: The Essential Lord Northbourne on Ecology & Religion

Twenty-five years before Rachel Carson published her famous work ‘Silent Spring,’ Lord Northbourne coined the phrase organic farming and helped to promote the importance of a holistic approach to the environment. His work, linking spirituality and ecology, has inspired a generation of writings from Wendell Berry to HRH Prince Charles. This book not only features Northbourne’s previously unpublished writings, but, also, his private correspondence with Thomas Merton, highlighting the spiritual depth of his writings.

Lord Northbourne expresses convincingly enough his horror of the social system that seems to be growing up. The frenzy of destruction by which the nations are now overtaken must be succeeded by some new world, and a society that accepts the consequences of science but uses science to control them.. But any society will crash in its turn unless it embodies those qualities of simplicity and honesty which Lord Northbourne finds in life upon the land.
-The Times Literary Supplement

Walter James (4th Lord Northbourne) was heir to a long line of country landowners distinguished for their public service in Parliament. An avid sportsman he won a silver medal at the 1920 Olympic Games in rowing. The author of several influential books, he coined the phrase organic farming in 1940 in ‘Look to the Land.’ He passed away in 1982.