The Return of the Grey Partridge with Roger Morgan-Grenville
in conversation with Adam Bedford

Date: Sunday 9th June 2024
Venue: Montgomery Town Hall
Time: 1.30-2.15pm
Tickets: £9.00
The Return of the Grey Partridge tells the extraordinary story of a wildlife restoration project high above Arundel on West Sussex’s South Downs, on land owned by the Duke of Norfolk.
Following the seasons of one year, the book shows how the farm of Peppering is gradually renatured: fields are divided up with hedgerows and trees, beetle banks are built across fields, the land is manured rather than fed with artificial fertilisers, and much of it is returned to pasture. The land is still very much farmland, but with a rapid increase in wildlife and biodiversity, including the return of the previously threatened grey partridges.
Hear from Roger as he talks about what he learnt from the project and how modern farming can work in partnership with nature not only to restore birdlife but to the benefit of the ecosystem as a whole.
Roger Morgan-Grenville is writer and conservation campaigner specialising in the practicalities of biodiversity loss and recovery. His books include Liquid Gold: Bees and the Pursuit of Midlife Honey; Shearwater; Taking Stock: A Journey Among Cows; Across a Waking Land and 2024’s The Return of the Grey Partridge. Before becoming a full-time writer, he was a soldier and worked at a small kitchenware company. He also helped to found and fundraise for the charity Help for Heroes and is a founding member and chair of trustees of the campaigning charity, Curlew Action.
Adam Bedford has studied and worked in and around agriculture for the past 20 years. In his day job he develops projects in the gap between farmers and scientists to boost sustainable agriculture. In his spare time runs the Fieldwork Book Club, an online book club with 500 subscribers across the world reading books on food, farming and the natural world with author interviews every month. Adam lives rurally near York with his wife and three sons.