James Rebanks

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. This is an extended version of the original Radio 4 broadcast and, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:46

My castaway today is the shepherd and writer James Rebanks. His family have been farming in the Cumbrian Fells for over 600 years and he's firmly rooted in the land. His skills and knowledge have been passed down through the generations and the farming life began early for him. As a toddler, he rode on the back of his grandfather's tractor and as he grew he'd increasingly help out with the daily tasks of clipping, dipping, feeding and mucking out. His other career as a best-selling author was inspired by his discovery of social media. Tweeting pictures of his beloved Herdwick sheep and his sheepdogs brought him to the attention of publishers. The Shepherd's Life was a huge success and brought the reality of life on the hills to townies across the world. He says, I have always liked the feeling of carrying on something bigger than me, something that stretches back through other hands and other eyes into the depths of time. To work there is a humbling thing. It liberates you from any illusion or self-importance. James Rebanks, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

James Rebanks1:45

Thank you for having me. It's nice to be here.

Presenter1:47

So, when I think of the Lake District, what comes to mind first is the fantastic smell of it. When I arrive and get out of the car, that beautiful, mulchy, mossy. Actually, I'm such a terrible towny, I don't even know what it is I'm smelling. But I wondered if you did. What is that?

James Rebanks1:53

And

James Rebanks2:04

The first thing that's going through my head is no, I don't I don't think it smells'cause that's my normal, so I'd probably if I went to Sundluda somewhere I'd probably notice that the smell's very different, but Oh, you would. But yeah, maybe at this time of year I can imagine what you're talking about, which is um

Speaker 12:12

Uh

James Rebanks2:16

There's a lot of woodland in our valley, and it's it does smell very damp and leafy and probably moldy.

James Rebanks2:23

Yeah, but mostly it just smells clean.

Presenter2:25

It's definitely a clean smell. So many of us, of course, know the lakes through our holidays. Millions visit every year. How would you describe the landscape that you rooted in?

James Rebanks2:36

Well, I think the I think the Lake District's a really special place. It's um not only beautiful in the natural sense with its geology and its lakes and things, but uh it has a very unique farming culture that goes back like five thousand odd years. No one really knows, at least a thousand years. And

James Rebanks2:54

I didn't realize that that was unique really. I just grew up in it. It's what my granddad did, what my dad did. And it's only really when I got into my late teens and my twenties and um

James Rebanks3:02

realized how different we were from lots of other people and different from the people that came on holiday there and started to think about that, that you realize how special it is. So I think like my kids, I've got four kids at home and uh I think they just take it for granted. They think everybody lives with a really beautiful view and sheep around the house and things. But no, I'm I'm aware we're very, very lucky to live in that place.

Presenter3:21

So your sheep, if I wanted to buy one I know I would need some guineas, but I'm wondering what else I would need to look for.

James Rebanks3:28

You look for a mix of understandable, sensible things that sheep needs in the mountains, so it needs really, really short teeth because the first thing that gives up on a sheep when it's old is its teeth become too long and they fall out. And then you die if you're a sheep in a really hard mountain environment. They need a really tight, hard, weather-turning coat. And they need to be very mobile, so they need really good legs. But because people have done this for a very long time, there's a whole culture, a shepherding culture, emerged on that that says that they have to be a certain kind of white in the head, sort of brilliant, pure snow-white, and the fleece should be a sort of slaty blue colour, like the slates in the Lake District on the roofs.

Presenter4:05

So there's a an aesthetic that started to develop alongside the practical.

James Rebanks4:07

And and shepherds are as geeky about what their sheep look like as other people are about punk music or Picasso's or whatever else. You get me and two or three of my friends together looking at the perfect sheep and we can talk for hours about it.

Presenter4:11

Look like

James Rebanks4:19

Uh

Presenter4:19

Well, exactly. I mean, I know you're you're a sheep nerd. Now, tell me about your sheep dogs,'cause I know that they're working dogs rather than pets.

James Rebanks4:27

Yeah, there's uh so we have Floss and Tan and then we have their daughters Meg and Nell and Bess. And what's the relationship though?

James Rebanks4:37

They're keeping me in business basically. I I can't do anything without them. So, if you go into a mountain in the Lake District and you try to chase 300 sheep down to a farm without dogs, you're going to look like a complete fool. And there's no technology, there's no quad bike or drone or anything that's going to do that. The sheep are too smart, they know the landscape, they're not going to fall for any of that nonsense. And it's basically dog and stick farming. It's very old-fashioned way of farming poor land, really.

Presenter4:59

You're sharing the music that you love with us today. Tell me about your first disc. Why have you chosen this one?

James Rebanks5:04

Okay, so I've I've chosen Rukmaninoff's rhapsody on a theme from Paganini and it's pure and simply because one of my first memories when I was maybe six or seven is my mum playing this record. Uh my mum was uh what my dad would have called an import or a foreigner. She was from uh as far away as industrial Lancashire, so my half of my family were were cotton workers in

Presenter5:25

Which is how far away from

James Rebanks5:26

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter5:29

50 to 60 miles per second.

James Rebanks5:31

So this is this was the definition of foreigner in my childhood.

Presenter5:33

Uh

James Rebanks5:33

Uh So my mum's family had been cotton mill workers and they'd sort of climbed out of some pretty poor hard conditions and they'd really done it through education. And I'm a funny mix of those two things really, that farming culture and the sort of bookish culture that my mum would bring into the house. So as I'm trying to go to sleep at night when I'm sort of seven or eight years old, I thought it was my mum playing this but my mum laughs at this memory and says she was actually playing it on the record, not playing it on the piano.

James Rebanks5:58

So who knows who was playing it, but it's a beautiful piece of music and it reminds me of my mum.

Presenter7:03

Part of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini played by Cecile Usay with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Simon Rattle.

Presenter7:13

So, James Rebanks, you currently look after around 400 sheep, is that right?

James Rebanks7:17

We have about 400 yows and then we have the young stock or followers as we would call them, so there's about six hundred and something cheap into the middle.

Presenter7:23

Okay, and yows meaning

James Rebanks7:24

Uh Yows is yew uh yews in the south of England so

Presenter7:26

Oh, right. Okay. Yeah.

James Rebanks7:27

So nearly all the terminology of what we do is va is is sort of Viking or Old English,'cause the sheep and the shepherds were more or less Vikings a thousand years ago.

Presenter7:36

So you are out there in all weathers all year round. I wonder which is your preferred season?

James Rebanks7:43

The truth is, I I'm head over heels in love with the landscape where I live and the work that I do, so I love all the seasons. I don't really have a favourite.

James Rebanks7:49

I love lambing time in the spring. It could be really hard if you get some late snow showers, but

James Rebanks7:53

That's an amazing thing to do, just to get up every morning and know that if you do your job right, you keep sheep alive, and if you do it wrong, they'll die.

James Rebanks8:00

I mean, I also love the the autumn'cause that's when our work comes to fruition. That's where we sell the the the sheep that we've put all this effort for decades into trying to breed the perfect sheep. That's when it goes public, if you like, and we all go to the sales and the shows.

James Rebanks8:12

And you try and prove that you're a good shepherd by turning out these fantastically healthy, fantastically beautiful sheep that meet the aesthetic that we were talking about. My wife Helen says I go slightly crazy that she calls it tup fever in the autumn where you slightly lost it'cause you you're so in the zone with this thing that you love.

Presenter8:26

It's all you're thinking about.

James Rebanks8:27

Yeah.

Presenter8:28

So, you mentioned being a sheep nerd and how nerdy shepherds can be about sheep. I mean, I've read that you can tell.

Presenter8:34

Sheep from each other, but also that you can see the kind of family history of the sheep a little bit.

James Rebanks8:40

Yeah, so we're talking full-on nerdy, like other people are nerdy about other things. And this isn't even surprising to shepherds, by the way. This is not some unique attribute of mine. So if you point to one of my sheep, I can tell you what its mother was, what its father was, I can tell you what it's bred in the preceding three, four, five, ten years, and which other sheep in the flock it's related to. And this is not some sort of weird showing off for shepherds, it's actually really important because the genetics of the different families in the flock matter. And just like other people would have a sort of encyclopedic knowledge of records and things from the 1970s, the great sheep from the 1970s are spoken about and remembered. And there is a whole series of books, there are sort of flock books where the photographs from every year going back to the 1920s of the important sheep are captured.

Presenter9:26

And another piece of terminology, they are hefted, your sheep. They roam the unfenced fells and they don't stray. Why not?

James Rebanks9:33

So the key thing to understand, which a lot of people don't get, is that the sheep don't have to be flocked together with a shepherd round them like you would see in the Mediterranean. There aren't any large natural predators on those mountains, so the sheep disperse there and they find a specific place on the mountain which is their heave, we would call it. And when they go back to the fell or the mountain in the spring, they take their lambs with them. And the really weird bit is that the sheep have a culture. The sheep teach their daughters that this is our place on the mountain, this is the place you must come back to every spring. So I can go to a certain place on the mountain not far from where we live, and before we get there, I can tell you which one of the sheep will be there. And I can tell you that her grandmother held to the same place. So when I get older and I

James Rebanks10:16

become interested in writing and and song lyrics and other things like that, I think actually I'd like to tell people.

James Rebanks10:21

Just to try and explain. I was wildly frustrated when I started reading the books about the Lake District. Apart from a few sort of attempts by people like Wordsworth to write about the people of the landscape, there there's not a lot in there from the people who live there and what they think it is that they live in. So, um, eventually I realized I might have to do that. I couldn't wait for somebody else to do it, I just had to get on and do it myself.

Presenter10:41

We'll come to that. Time for some music first. Tell me about your second disc and why you've chosen it.

James Rebanks10:45

So my second song is A Boy Named Sue by Johnny Cash and these first two tracks just make me laugh because they remind me of my mum and dad who in some ways were a very unlikely pair in my mum was very sort of civilized and bookish and classical and my dad was just a sort of much more sort of northern

James Rebanks11:03

sort of rural working class fella.

James Rebanks11:05

with the sort of taste of that, so he would sit and watch John Wayne movies and he loved country and western music and

James Rebanks11:11

sitting watching the football and it was sort of noisy and fun and loved to dance and um I still baffled how we mum and dad got together but it seemed to work and we seemed to love each other and the song reminds me of him.

Presenter11:21

Well, my daddy left home when I was three and he didn't leave much. Dama and me, just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze.

Presenter11:30

Uh

James Rebanks11:31

Now I don't blame him cause he run and hid, but the meanest thing that he ever did was before he left.

Presenter11:36

He went and named me Sue.

Presenter11:41

Well he must have thought that it was quite a joke and it got a lot of laughs from a lots of folks. Seems I had to fight my whole life through.

Presenter11:50

Some gal would giggle and I'd get rid and some guy'd laugh tonight and bust his head. I'll tell you, life ain't easy for a boy named Sue. Johnny Cash and a boy named Sue. James Rebanks, you've said that as soon as you could toddle, you would go off with your granddad, Huey, in his Land Rover to do some job on the farm. And he sounds pretty formidable. How would you describe him?

James Rebanks12:12

Yeah. He was, um he was for middle, but he was it was also fun, so um

James Rebanks12:17

He only had one tooth, so I

James Rebanks12:20

He was quite a dull-looking fellow. I'd want to chew the meat off a lamb chop like a jackal with this one tooth. But he was the truth is, my grandfather was quite an old-fashioned, sort of patriarchal type figure, and I got the best of him. So I'm the blue-eyed grandson who gets dragged round and treated specially. It's only later, like 10, 15 years later, I realize he's an absolute rogue, that he wasn't necessarily the nicest person to be married to, or even the best of dads to my own dad. So there was another side to it, which may be not so nice, but as a kid, I just had this really wise old guy that would take me with him everywhere, and he would show me where the foxes went under the fences. He would explain to me about swallows going to Africa and coming back to our log shed.

Speaker 312:37

Okay.

James Rebanks13:03

And he would teach me about the salmon coming up the rivers in the autumn and

James Rebanks13:07

If if anything, his mistake was to to make me think I was too special. So by the age of about eight I thought I was like the sort of prince of the world. This man was training me to be to be something im important and and maybe he was being a farmer. But I I loved him dearly and he was uh was and still in some ways is uh uh my hero. And when I think about how I want to look after our land and

James Rebanks13:26

Try and strike some some kind of balance between what we need to get from it as farmers and looking after the nature and the wild things on it, then for me is a really important role model. I I want to try and

James Rebanks13:37

build on what he taught me and tried to be.

Presenter13:39

I've seen a photograph of you as a kid sitting in front of your dad on a horse wearing a cowboy hat. I mean, what are your earliest memories of life on the farm? What were you expected t to do?

James Rebanks13:50

You basically just follow people around. So, I think a lot of like family people listening to this is you spend your childhood in the back of a tractor sitting on a box of spanners. You're you're bouncing around here, there, and everywhere in Land Rovers, you're

James Rebanks14:01

You've been sent to run when they move cattle down the road, fetch them back from a field to the farmstead. Your job is to jump over the wall and then run to get back in front of them before the next house or the next junction. So I did all the things that farm kids do, and I look back and slightly amazed I didn't die because the health and safety implications of some of those things were insane. But we'd build like these mammoth dens in the hay barns. So no, it was a good childhood and there was quite a lot of freedom as well. So we'd like roam all over the place. I had quite a protective mother until I was like seven or eight or something like that and then they just got to a point where she couldn't hold me in anymore. And I realize how privileged that is now. So I was reading an amazing thing the other day that the average kid in Britain spends less time outside now than the average prisoner. And not only is that incredibly screwed up, obviously, now, but it makes me realize how lucky I was that we just roamed all over the place.

Presenter14:50

And what about your lo what about your love of reading? When did that begin?

James Rebanks14:50

But you

James Rebanks14:53

So, um the truth is I was never a very bookish kid, but we lived uh sort of in the middle of nowhere and there wasn't enough to do, so

James Rebanks15:02

Maybe one night a week we would go to like the local town in Penrith and we'd try and do doughnuts in like a Big Brother's car or somebody's car. Anybody that grew up in the north that was remotely sort of working class or rough around the edges knows that you drove to the local town, you sat there talking about absolutely nothing, parked next to each other with the lights on and occasionally you would do a doughnut like sort of Lewis Hamilton does where they sort of turn around at the end of the day. They're a break or skid the car around. That's right. Some part of this in theory was meant to impress young women and get you a girlfriend but it was like the worst way to impress anybody ever. So that was really boring and that wasn't my thing. So what do you do the rest of the week? Well in daylight hours you can work on the farm and do what you love.

Presenter15:24

Put the brake on, skidding.

James Rebanks15:40

But there was like one T V in our house and like dad decides what's on T V so he's watching some boring thing. So eventually that led to me going in like one of the other rooms and there was a bookcase full of my mother's dad's books, my grandfather, and started reading books. And this is only about six or eight months after I'd flunked out of school because I wasn't interested in books and I realized immediately that I love books and immediately thought I want to do this. But just to make it more complicated I did not want to be a farmer. I wanted to be a farmer and write books and of course there's no I had no idea how you did those two things.

Presenter16:12

Well we'll find out shortly. For now we're going to go to the music. What's next?

James Rebanks16:16

The next track is the theme from the movie Zulu by John Barry, and it reminds me of being eight or ten years old and on a sort of rainy Saturday or rainy Sunday dodging work. I should really have been helping my dad in his version of how we should live. I would sort of sneak off like eight-year-olds do and I would sit and watch Zulu and I would memorize all the lines and I could tell you exactly what Michael Kane says as the Zulus come over the hill and all that stuff to this day. And I love this piece of music. Every time I hear this piece of music, I'm eight years old again watching that movie in my mum and dad's front room.

Presenter17:51

The theme from the original soundtrack of the film Zulu, composed by John Barry. James Reebanks, when did you first become aware of what had been written about the Lake District by authors like Wordsworth or Wainwright?

James Rebanks18:05

Um, I think I was well into my twenties, really. So I I'd I'd love books for like ten years or something, but

James Rebanks18:11

I think somewhere along the way I thought, oh, somebody will have written books about what we do.

James Rebanks18:15

I'd start going to bookshops and sort of looking through the shelves thinking it's all the same, it's all

James Rebanks18:20

It's all Wordsworth or it's all Wayne Wright. They write some brilliant stuff, absolutely amazing stuff they write. But it's not me, it's not and it's not about me or my people. So I I I'd I'd grown up watching films like 1960s what do they call it? Working cl um work sort of kitchen sink dramas. And I would watch those films that and I knew the history of that, that people had to stand up and and claim that space in the in the culture to hi be heard as working class people.

James Rebanks18:45

So to discover there wasn't really like a rural version of that.

James Rebanks18:49

I remember thinking this isn't that this isn't the whole story, this is just part of the story, this is

James Rebanks18:54

Some dead rich white guy's version of it. How can that be?

James Rebanks18:57

How can that be enough?

James Rebanks18:59

And then I guess I'm a little bit lucky or weird or something'cause I end up doing a version of that and people like it.

Presenter19:04

I mean, you didn't have a great time at school. I think you had to travel ten miles to get to your secondary school. What was it like?

James Rebanks19:12

Yeah, I mean the the nearest I can say is it was a bit like Kez. My memories of school are a bit like being in the Ken Loach film, Kez. It was lots of bored kids standing around who didn't think school was anything to do with them and

James Rebanks19:22

I remember just thinking, I don't want to be in this place. Why am I in this place? Why are people making me be here? I don't want to be here. No one here cares about me. No one cares about my values or my family.

James Rebanks19:31

I just want to get out.

Presenter19:32

And were you different? You know, was there a separation between the kids who, like you, grew up on farms and and the kids who didn't?

James Rebanks19:39

Most of my best friends were

James Rebanks19:41

Just lads out of the local town that are a bit like like I was, a little bit rougher on the edges and

James Rebanks19:46

Sort of united by mischief and a sort of sense of humour of what we thought was funny, age 15. And.

James Rebanks19:53

Uh yeah, I'm I'm not at all proud of it now, but the what we thought was funny then was just doing anything that wasn't what the teacher said you should do, or breaking stuff, or just not being where you were meant to be.

James Rebanks20:04

So

James Rebanks20:06

Literally from the moment I went to secondary school at the aged about eleven, I don't think I ever wrote anything in my math book till I left five years later. And and now I can't quite believe how anybody ever got away with that. I'm very lucky my s one of my sisters is a head teacher at school and I know how all the amazing stuff that teachers can do and it it seems to have changed, but just at that time, in that place.

James Rebanks20:26

It wasn't good for me. So so my way of dealing with that was to be the Joker. Usually the one that got caught for doing the really stupid thing. I wish I'd been more mature and big enough to rise above it or find some use in it, but I I didn't.

Presenter20:38

You left at fifteen with two GCSEs. What did you think the future had in store for you at that moment?

James Rebanks20:43

My granddad was very clear'cause uh G C S E's in woodwork and R E so my grandfather combined these two things and he said I could be a vicar and I could knock the nails into the coffin.

James Rebanks20:51

This is the only combination of these two things. And to my dad and granddad, school was baffling as well. They didn't really think that had anything to do with us.

James Rebanks21:00

It was just something you suffered and then you got out as soon as you could.

James Rebanks21:03

And

James Rebanks21:04

The saddest thing I did then, and I'm still ashamed of it now, is

James Rebanks21:07

And I think I grew up at the moment where I realised how stupid it was really, because I had a fantastic geography teacher called Mr. Tan and he tried really, really hard to engage me, and he knew I could do school stuff. And in the exam, I thought it would be hilarious to do brilliant answers, or the best answers I was capable of, but do them in all the wrong boxes on the exam sheet. Until about a month later, or whatever it was, two weeks later, when we got the exam results, and there was just a look on Mr. Tan's face that made me feel about an inch tall. And to this day, I just think that was so pathetic.

James Rebanks21:36

But I think in the moment when he looked at me like that, I thought, Do you know what? This joke's on me. It's me that's a clown here And that's and I left school and

James Rebanks21:45

I think I'd got out of my system really, and in the months that followed, that's why I started reading.

Presenter21:49

Interested in that you left first though, and then you had to do it on your own terms. Let's go to the music. Tell me about your fourth piece today.

James Rebanks21:52

Oh yeah.

James Rebanks21:57

Okay, so the fourth song today I think is the best bit of poetry about 1980s England. It's called A New England sung by Kirsty McCorm and it's absolutely beautiful and it reminds me absolutely of that time and that place and it was one of the first pieces of literature if you like that I ever fell in love with. There's some lines in this song that I think when I heard them I thought oh that's cool. I wish I could do that.

James Rebanks22:22

Now I put you on a bag as do you hit me up?

James Rebanks22:26

I don't feel bad about letting you go, I just feel sad about letting you know

James Rebanks22:34

I want to change the world. I'm not looking for a new England. I'm looking for another girl.

Speaker 322:45

Uh

James Rebanks22:46

I don't wanna

Speaker 322:46

To change the world

James Rebanks22:48

I'm not looking

Presenter22:50

Born in New England.

Presenter22:52

I am looking for another girl

Presenter22:55

Hirsty McCall and New England. James Rebanks, in 1990 you lost your granddad after he suffered a stroke and because of the farm's finances your grandparents' bungalow and I think a couple of fields had to be sold. So you and your dad then became responsible for the farm. It sounds like quite a stressful time. How did the two of you get on?

James Rebanks23:15

Uh we got on dreadful.

James Rebanks23:18

So, um uh my dad wasn't this sort of politically correct sort of an American movie give you a hug type figure. He was he was a bit rougher and a bit harder than that.

James Rebanks23:29

And I was this awkward.

James Rebanks23:32

sort of edgy, pushy seventeen, eighteen year old thinking I knew stuff and we should do things my way. And he'd he'd only just got out of the shadow of his own dad, so it was just a meeting of a rock and a hard place. So we we butt heads quite a lot. Um

James Rebanks23:47

I think there's something a lot of people don't have in the in the sort of modern world, is to have a period where you actually h despite everything, have to work with your dad or work with your granddad. And and you see the worst of each other, but you also see the best of each other and you spend a lot of time together and

James Rebanks24:01

You really know who that person is. So, even though it wasn't like the best period of my life.

James Rebanks24:07

I wouldn't have missed it for anything really. And what happens over time is um

James Rebanks24:11

We sort of work through that. You know, you get through the bits where you have a fight, you get through the arguments and you start to realise that he's actually a much uh sort of finer and more decent man than I realized he was when I was fifteen or sixteen. Um so by the time he died uh three or so I'm gonna cry, but at the time he uh died three or four years ago he's like my best mate.

James Rebanks24:29

And en he'd mellowed

James Rebanks24:31

And I'd mellowed and the sort of fightin' stopped.

James Rebanks24:34

And um

James Rebanks24:36

And I and one of the one of the things that I'm most pleased about is sorry, I'm crying now, um, is that I didn't write the book when I was twenty,'cause it would have been the wrong book, it would have been the angry book about my dad. And instead it became a book about which I love my dad, which is a good thing. He read it, didn't he?

James Rebanks24:51

Yeah, so when I was writing the book, my dad was dying of cancer and

James Rebanks24:57

I was terrified. I thought, what's he gonna think? You know, you don't wanna upset your dad in the last weeks of his life.

James Rebanks25:04

So, um he read a proof of the book about three weeks before he died, and I said to my dad, What do you think of it? and he said, Well, the dedication bit at the battery is a bit bloody soppy, which made me laugh and I thought, Well, that's all I'm gonna get out of him. So I went to see my mum and she said, He's not gonna tell you, but he cried all the way through.

James Rebanks25:22

And uh and then I said to my sister, I said, Jane, go and go and find out what he thought of this book and um she came back and uh she said he's amazed that he comes out of this book as a effing legend.

James Rebanks25:36

And it was nice,'cause it had come full circle. He'd grown up, I'd grown up, all the nastiness, all the hard bits, they've all gone. And you've got two people who've love each other, and it's okay.

Presenter25:46

In 1995, when you were 21, you met Helen, who would go on to become your wife. Tell me about when you met. How did she change you at the time?

James Rebanks25:55

Yeah, so H Helen came along just when I needed what Helen brings to my life, really, which is Helen's more grown up than me, more sensible than me, and doesn't butt with any of my nonsense. So, uh

James Rebanks26:07

20-year-old me was sort of edging towards being a bit more grown up and was reading a lot, sort of wanting to be a writer, but it wasn't going to go anywhere. And Helen came along and said, Look, what the hell are you doing? You're being a jerk. Stop the clowning round thing. So, almost overnight, I did, much to the disappointment of my friends who enjoyed me being a clown. And I built a life with Helen and

James Rebanks26:28

It was a much more sensible life. So Helen Helen said, Look, you're brainy, you're buckish and you're not getting on very well with your dad. You you need to go back to school. So I did. I went back and I did um classes at nights at uh adult education college in Carlisle. And I was really lucky I got some amazing teachers who

James Rebanks26:45

Within like two weeks, like, what what what are you? Like, where did you come from? You've read everything. And I had, I'd read like hundreds of books, history books and things. And every time the teacher asked a question, I was like, super key, like, put my hand up. So I had this teacher who I still owe a great debt to. He said, um,

James Rebanks27:01

you need to apply to go to Oxford or Cambridge. And this is hilarious to me'cause I I have no A levels and two bloody G C S E's and that guy helped me to not only to apply to Oxford but to go and have an interview and I got in without even finishing my A levels which is insane.

Presenter27:16

Time to hear some music. Tell me about your fifth disc today and why you've chosen it.

James Rebanks27:19

There's a common theme through a lot of these songs which is just amazing lyrics and somebody who's songwriting I really admire is Jarvis Cocker and this song is Lip Gloss by Pulp and I can very distinctly remember being like 20 years old putting a drystone wall up on a field on our farm and it's like a really sunny day in July and there's lots of swifts swirling around above me and listening to the words and thinking I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna write something. I'm gonna do it.

Speaker 127:46

You're looking thin, but all that you live on is lift glass and cigarettes, smokes at the end of the day.

Speaker 127:54

But it's given the rest to someone with long black hair It's not simply making such a mess

Speaker 328:03

Oh you never ever wanna go home And you won't you see may as well hang around for a while

Speaker 128:11

Uh

Speaker 328:11

Uh

Speaker 128:11

It died on the phone.

James Rebanks28:14

Uh

Speaker 128:14

BJ T

James Rebanks28:15

It's my life pump baby

James Rebanks28:17

So you've gotta leave by so they can

Presenter28:23

Pulp and lip gloss. So tell me James Rebanks, what made you decide that you wanted to go to university in your mid-twenties?

James Rebanks28:30

Um I wasn't really sure that I I did, um, to be honest, but I I had this as I say, I had this teacher that pushed me in that direction to apply and one of the historians I liked the most, I liked his writing the most, was this guy called AJP Taylor and he taught at a college in Oxford at Maudlin College. And I thought, well th they probably won't let me in, but I'll go and have a day looking at like the college where he taught. At least I'll know where it was. So I went down and had an interview and it was um

James Rebanks28:56

Yeah, they I mean, they do this interview thing where they try to rough you up. But I I was I was like in my mid twenties by then and that they're like no one was gonna rough me up, so I just give them back as good as I I could and

James Rebanks29:06

Um, and yeah, I mean, about two thirds of the way through the interview I could just see them smiling, like they were they were amazed that I think they were baffled where I'd come from,'cause I was quite different from the sort of typical kid that goes to Oxford and

James Rebanks29:18

I came out of the room, yeah, and I just thought, yeah, they were lapping that up. They got in. Still, even then, when I had this letter in my hand, I thought, well, do I do it? I'm so attached to where I live that it was like a wrench for me. If I go there, does that mean I no longer belong here?

Presenter29:33

And what did you think uh the reaction from your friends and family would be?

James Rebanks29:37

I thought they'd either be baffled or that they'd think I'd sort of turned away from them or something.

James Rebanks29:42

And I got a massive surprise that they were all actually really proud of me. They were like, give me hugs and things, and like they felt like it reflected well on them. I remember having a conversation with my dad a couple of days later where I said, Am I going to go and do this? And he's like, You idiot. Of course, you're going to go do it. I don't need your help on this farm. You're a pain in the ass anyway. Go and do it. So I went. Of course, the downside of that is a few days later, you're in this incredibly posh college in Oxford where you don't know anybody. Yeah, what was that like? I was.

James Rebanks30:09

It was kind of okay, but I was just like another planet to me. I don't know people like that. I don't speak like that. I didn't know any of the words meant.

James Rebanks30:17

I couldn't even get myself around the college because I didn't understand what people were saying. I don't know what a quad is, I don't know what Michelmas term means. All this sort of posh language that it all works with. I didn't know what the hell was going on. I was just baffled for a few weeks. But also, there were amazing tutors there. There were like a couple of people that just realised what I was, which is a bit rough around the 80s and a bit green. But I could do what I was there to do. So I had an amazing tutor called Ewan Green, who's a professor of history, and he was just really, really good. After about three or four weeks, I'd been getting two ones, which I have to translate in my head is like a B in anybody else's sort of schooling. And I went to see him and I said, look, I didn't come here to get B's. How the hell do you get firsts? And he said, you're writing like you're one of them.

James Rebanks30:58

I want you. I want the you version of this. Write your essays like you're you, where you came from and what you're about and what your values are, and find your own voice. And it's one of the best pieces of advice anybody ever gave me. And he also said, Go ahead and have a couple of beers before you write your essay. He said, I'd like a much rawr version of you. And if you're mad about something that we're writing about, tell me what you're mad about.

James Rebanks31:18

Let it go, let it out. And I did. And from like that week to when I left, I got like firsts in every essay with his help and guidance and pushing me along.

James Rebanks31:27

And how did you do

Presenter31:27

And how did you do

James Rebanks31:28

It went.

Presenter31:28

When you left.

James Rebanks31:30

Oh, you're great, finally.

Presenter31:30

Yeah.

James Rebanks31:31

I got a double first. I'm still slightly embarrassed about that. It feels odd that I got that. I enjoyed making you say that. I shouldn't be embarrassed about it. I worked hard for it and um it's as good as you can do there. And then I didn't know what to do. Like I wanted to go home really, really badly. But th you're not supposed to go to Oxford and then go back to Cumbria to work on a sheep farm.

Presenter31:47

What I mean, what did you do? How did you deal with me?

James Rebanks31:51

I sing home. I used to call it pretend shepherding, so I would like get up at like half past six, seven o'clock and I would walk around the parks of Oxford. Uh for no other reason than that's what my body thought I should be doing, which is out being outside.

James Rebanks32:02

You've got the wind or the rain or whatever, and it it was like my way of dealing with the adjustment.

James Rebanks32:07

And then I didn't spend very much time there. So they only have three or eight week terms in Oxford. So I was home more of the year than I was there. And I was going home at weekends if there was any like sheep sales and things. So some of my friends some of them didn't even realise I'd been to Oxford. I'd come home and I'd be at a sheep sale. Uh and they would say things like, I thought you'd gone to and then they'd just go, Ah, now whatever and we'd just carry on as normal.

James Rebanks32:26

I think a lot of people go to those colla universities and it it changes their life and it gives them a set of friends and it changes who they are, but for me it wasn't really that.

James Rebanks32:32

I wanted to do the academic part of it. I wanted to show that I could do it and prove that I could do it. I'd already found Helen and I had friends that I liked and admired at home. I didn't want to be this sort of new

James Rebanks32:43

Southern posh, go to London guy, that wasn't me.

Presenter32:47

Let's have some music. Why have you chosen this sixth disc?

James Rebanks32:50

So the sixth song that I've chosen is Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key by Billy Bragg and Wilco. And I chose it for a really simple reason. I have two or three songs that I play late at night when I'm trying to psych myself to write. And when I was writing my book, The Shepherd's Life, I played the song over and over again because I don't want to think about anything. I just want it to sort of get me in a rhythm and the chorus where he sings Ain't Nobody That Can Sing Like Me is helping me. Somewhere in my head, it's making me think, oh, you can do this. Just try, just go. And that's what this song does for me.

Presenter33:19

She said it's hard for me to see

Presenter33:24

Now one little boy got so ugly

Presenter33:30

Yes, my little girlie, that might be.

Presenter33:34

But there ain't nobody that could sing like me Ain't nobody that can sing like me

Presenter33:42

We'll be under the monarchy.

Presenter33:47

We will be under in the monarchy

Presenter33:52

There ain't nobody that could seem like me.

Presenter33:56

Billy Bragg and Wilco, way over yonder in a minor quay. James Reebanks, so you graduated with that double first in history and then returned back to the Lake District from Oxford. How certain were you that you and Helen would continue to farm and bring up your family there?

James Rebanks34:11

The truth is not very certain for like another ten years after that. The problem on the farm was we didn't have a farmhouse on what was my grandfather's farm and that was my dream and

James Rebanks34:20

I had two options really. I almost convinced myself that if I became a really horrible banker in London, I could earn a fortune in like five years. That wasn't credible because I had no skills that were useful for that. And then the other theory was I would just go home and whatever sort of white collar office stuff people did that paid enough for you to buy a house in a village near to where we lived, I would do. And I did. I did all sorts of things for four or five, nearly ten years. And then eventually I became interested in the economics of historic places.

James Rebanks34:48

And to this day I'm really interested like particularly in tourism and how little money from tourism goes to local people. And I ended up with a weird other life where until very recently I was advising UNESCO about how tourism works in places around the world and particularly how you can change and adapt tourism so that more money goes to poorer people in places in Africa or Asia.

Presenter35:08

It is very interesting because obviously, your experience and your roots are very local and particular, but actually, that issue is global. It's something that affects people all around the world. Did you find commonalities that surprised you?

James Rebanks35:22

Yeah, well it wasn't really part of the job, but maybe eighty percent of the places I went to, um, were very rural and

James Rebanks35:28

The people in all of those places were recognisably like my people. So I had all sorts of funny experiences. Like I went to Tanzania and I remember being in this room and on one side of the room were the Maasai people and on the other side of the room were the park managers. And I quickly realised that I had to make my mind up which side you need to engage with and the problem was that they couldn't get the Maasai people interested in the conservation message that we're there to talk about. So I just told them about my life at home and I could see the defences drop immediately and the Maasai women were talking to the Maasai men and as soon as I stopped talking about who I was and why I'd come they came to see me immediately and they said they wanted to show me the cattle and they wanted to show me their sheep and it was so there was that just like a shared bond there that was really useful and there were all sorts of really complex big issues but yeah it's it's been good because it was like a third sort of education. I'd had a sort of farm education and I'd had this sort of bookish schooling education and then maybe the third part of what makes me me is those years that they sent me all over the world to these odd places and then to realize that people all around the world are grappling with the same things, how they hold onto their past at the same time as moving into the future, how they live in places sustainably, how they eat, how they relate to animals, how they relate to the environment. These are common things all around the world that people are grappling with and having grown up grappling with them in the Lake District it was quite familiar territory to me and I was able to do that job as well as I could.

Presenter36:47

Your book The Shepherd's Life was published to great acclaim in twenty fifteen and it came about as a result of your presence on social media. You started tweeting about your life as a shepherd. What made you decide to do that?

James Rebanks36:59

Actually, all the good things that have happened in my life have not really been intentional. And using Twitter was the same. I didn't really want to do it. Sort of various friends had tried to persuade me that I would be good at it and I should tell people about what we did on social media. And eventually I did. I gave in and some of them persuaded me to post pictures. And I remember it was a sort of light bulb moment. I couldn't really believe that there were so many people interested in our mundane day-to-day work. Like what the dogs were doing, what the sheep were doing. Yeah, and I have a simple rule on that, which is I'm not really on it. It's all about the sheepdogs, the sheep, the landscape, some of the sort of conservation stuff that I care about. And before you know it, you've got like 100,000 people around the world following that. And I don't think I'm terribly important, but I think what's good about that is.

James Rebanks37:44

We've got become far too disconnected, haven't we? People in towns and cities have been f become far too disconnected from the countryside and the land and farming and what happens in farming and vice versa. And

James Rebanks37:53

I think what I really like about people talking to farmers on social media is it's bridging that again. So people can say, hang on a minute, what are you guys doing in this field? I don't like this. I'm worried about it. And the farmers can kick back and say, well, actually, you made me do it because you buy food too cheap in a supermarket and you don't care about the things that my grandfather cared about. So it's a good conversation. It's awkward at times and people have all sorts of legitimate concerns about farming and I wouldn't ask people to not have those.

James Rebanks38:17

But I think we need to talk to each other, don't we? Even when it's difficult.

Presenter38:21

Let's go to the music. What's your seventh disc to day?

James Rebanks38:24

Chateau Lobby number 4 by Father John Misty and I just chose it because I love it, it's one of my favourite tracks.

James Rebanks38:31

Uh

Presenter38:31

And I'd spread

James Rebanks38:36

Like the queen would have ostrich and cold pro wine

Speaker 338:41

We'll have Santana Christmas Eve.

Speaker 338:46

And play piano in the chateau's lobby.

Speaker 338:52

I've never done this, baby be gentle.

Presenter38:56

Well it's my first time I've got

Presenter39:00

Inside

Presenter39:02

Bulletborne

Presenter39:04

Father John Misty and Chateau Lobby number four. James Reebanks, fewer people are involved in your kind of farming today than they were when you were growing up. How do you see the future of the family farm?

James Rebanks39:17

A lot of I don't know answers in this are two other. So I I genuinely don't know. So I have two daughters and two younger sons and um they all love the farm and they they have childhoods a bit like mine where they roam around all over the place and you look out the window and my kids are about a mile away with them climbing trees and falling off rocks and things. So I've no doubt that they love that place and it's part of who they are. I I don't know if any of them want to be farmers. That that'll be their choice when they get older and

James Rebanks39:45

I don't know whether they'll be able to afford to be farmers'cause the a farm like ours makes very very little money unless we're very clever about how we do things. To me it isn't about forcing anybody to carry on forever. It's more about I felt like I was given this gift of experiencing that and knowing it and I like the idea I can I can give my kids that experience and

James Rebanks40:06

if they end up I don't know, if they end up in a rock and roll band and they live in New York or something, well, that's great, they'll still have some amazing memories of that childhood and where they came from and the values of the people that they came from. And if they want to be farmers, then I I've got a major headache, I've got to work out how to uh

James Rebanks40:21

I have to do something on our farm that keeps it going. And the big obsession we have at the moment on the farm is I care very much about adapting the farm to be as good for nature and as sustainable as we can possibly make it. So the kids help us to plant trees and hedges and things like that. We're just doing the best we can, but the truth is we need the British public to back good farming, as small family farms that do the right things and look after their animals well, look after the land as well as they can. We need everybody listening to programmes like this to go in the shops and ask for the right stuff and avoid the wrong stuff.

Presenter40:52

And what is the right stuff and wrong stuff? People are sitting there with pens awaiting instructions.

James Rebanks40:55

Against Sh-

James Rebanks40:57

I read a thing by Michael Pollan, the American food writer, recently, who said you shouldn't eat anything that your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. And I think that's true. So for our health and for all sorts of other reasons, we need to eat less processed food. And I know that's difficult because people are living on modest incomes and they're really busy and mums are working and dads are working and it feels like there's no time. But we have to

James Rebanks41:17

We're going to get in a real mess unless we have a food culture that respects good, healthy, simple ingredients, ideally produced as locally as possible. And everybody can't go to a nice posh middle class farmer's market or farm shop. That isn't everybody's reality. But to the greatest extent you possibly can, wherever you live, try and buy from local farmers. Try and buy from people who have high welfare standards. So look for things like the red tractor badge, which isn't perfect but which is better than nothing. Or look for organic food or try to the best extent that you possibly can in your busy and hard up lives to try and get closer to the farmer and buy directly from them. We've got to try and keep these things as short as we can.

Presenter41:55

Tell me about your eighth disc today.

James Rebanks41:58

Okay, so my uh my eighth uh track today is Mississippi God Damned by Nina Simone, who

James Rebanks42:05

who I just love. I think she's so

James Rebanks42:08

tough and raw and brilliant all at the same time and I love the story behind this track so

James Rebanks42:15

Nina Simone's story is amazing. There's some amazing books and and documentaries about her, but she sort of had it made. She had a really successful career singing to sort of quite affluent white audiences and singing sort of music that they liked. But she cared deeply about the civil rights struggle in in America and a lot of the injustices in American society. And

James Rebanks42:34

And she wouldn't bottle it and she wouldn't keep quiet. Some of her management wanted her to, so she got mad and she started writing songs that reflect getting mad. And this is one of the best of them. And not only the lyrics amazing, but they're raw and angry. And I just love her. I love the fact that she had the guts to potentially throw it all away and risk everything to fight for the things that she believed in. And she was brilliant.

Speaker 143:02

But that's just a trauma

Speaker 143:04

Washing the windows.

Speaker 143:07

Uh

Speaker 143:08

Pick in the cotton.

Speaker 143:10

He just played

James Rebanks43:13

Yeah.

Speaker 143:13

Yeah.

James Rebanks43:14

Uh

Presenter43:14

You're too damn lazy You think it's crazy

Presenter43:20

Where am I going? What am I doing? I don't know.

Presenter43:25

No, just try to do your very best. Stand up, be counted with all the rest. Cause everybody knows about Mississippi God

Presenter43:39

Nina Simone and Mississippi. Goddamn. James Reebanks, with all the skills you've got to deploy on the farm, I expect you are going to thrive on our desert island. What do you think would present the biggest challenge to your survival there?

James Rebanks43:54

homesickness, but I'm gonna tough it out and uh I think my way of doing that, which might not please my father new friends, is I'm gonna forget about home and I'm just gonna knuckle down and and goddamn it, I'm gonna make this island thing work.

Presenter44:06

What are we talking? Small farmsteads? Is there gonna be some sort of...

James Rebanks44:09

Possum red flower?

Presenter44:10

What's going on?

James Rebanks44:11

Some of my friends insist that I have to take a sheep as my luxury item, but that's not happening.

Presenter44:15

Yeah.

James Rebanks44:16

We better look after the ecosystem of this uh desert island. Uh the truth is when I watch people on these uh sort of reality T V programmes where they go to islands, I think what are you doing? Kill a pig, go and explore, go and work out where the fruit is, work out where the water is. I think I'm just gonna go hyper practical and uh know every inch of this island and work out how the best way to live on it is.

Presenter44:16

Repa

Presenter44:35

I'm away from the practicalities, to the things that will make your time there bearable, I am sending you away with the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible, and you get to choose another book to take with you. What's it going to be?

James Rebanks44:45

I don't really want those two, is is the the truth of it. But my other book that I'm going to take take with me is one of the books I fell in love with when I was seventeen years old, which is The Old Man in the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. And I can't think of a better book about the sea than that.

Presenter44:57

You can also have a luxury item. What counts as a luxury up on the Fells, I wonder?

James Rebanks45:01

I couldn't think of a luxury item, but I just want something to write with. That's what I am. I'm a guy that does stuff and writes about it. So, um I want an endless supply of paper and pen, so I can just work on my poetry, work on my C writing, keep some kind of journal about what what's happening and yeah, I wanna write.

Presenter45:17

Done.

James Rebanks45:18

Yeah.

Presenter45:18

And finally, one last choice, which of these eight discs would you choose to save?

James Rebanks45:22

I'm going to take the Kirstie McCall in New England'cause I I just love it and it reminds me of home and in the rare moments where I will let myself think about England when I'm on this desert island I think that would probably bring me back more than anything else.

Presenter45:37

James Rebanks, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

James Rebanks45:42

Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Presenter45:53

I love talking to James. His joy in what he does and where he lives shines through in everything he says and reminds me of many happy holidays in the Lake District when I was little. Over the years, several farmers and people who are focused on the land have been cast away, the founder of Riverford, Guy Singh Watson, the CEO of the Soil Association, Helen Browning, and the vet and writer whose books inspired the TV series All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot.

Presenter46:20

You'll have heard James refer to the legendary writer and illustrator of the pictorial guides to the Lakeland Fells, Alfred Wainwright. He was in his 80s when Sue Lawley cast him away in 1989. Alfred wasn't happy travelling far from his home, so the interview took place in Manchester, and only on the condition that he could visit Harry Ramsden's fish and chip restaurant near Leeds afterwards.

Speaker 346:42

You're um you're eighty one years old now. Do you still walk a lot?

Presenter46:47

No.

Presenter46:50

No, unfortunately my eyes have gone in the last two or three years. And uh I mean I always counsel people to watch where they're putting their feet on these rough mountain tracks.

Presenter47:03

Now the last time

Presenter47:06

that I I did a fellow walk. It was a pouring wet day, terrible.

Speaker 347:12

Uh

Presenter47:12

Uh

Presenter47:14

And I was stumbling and slipping all over the place, and it wasn't because that my glasses was mistied.

Presenter47:21

It was because I couldn't see where I was putting my feet.

Presenter47:26

And that's the last time I did a follow-up.

Presenter47:29

and the mountains

Presenter47:31

wept tears for me that day.

Presenter47:34

Never stop raining.

Presenter47:38

Latterly I've been more engaged in writing than than walking.

Speaker 347:43

Well, you'll be able to sit on the desert island, mister Wainwright, and and go for all these walks in your head because you know them all so well.

Presenter47:51

Yes.

Speaker 347:52

Ha have you ever been abroad, by the way?

Presenter47:54

No, I've never been on a ship or an aeroplane.

Presenter47:58

I hate going south from Candle.

Presenter48:02

I have no ambition to travel abroad. I couldn't face the uh the customs and the new currency and the foreign language and the foreign food and the passport.

Speaker 348:16

Well, you're going to face none of that in being cast away,'cause we plonk you directly on to the desert island, you see, and you will sit there in the tropical sunshine. Is is that all right?

Presenter48:29

Would there be anybody to look after me?

Speaker 348:31

Nobody.

Presenter48:33

Because I can't look after myself.

Presenter48:36

I've always been well looked after.

Presenter48:40

Would there be chip shops on the island?

Presenter48:44

No, well I'll be dead in in a month. In malnutrition.

Presenter48:50

Alfred Wainwright asking some important questions and speaking to Sue Lawley and the whole programme really is worth listening to. Of course, you can also hear James' hero Jarvis Cocker in the Desert Island Discs back catalogue too. Next week, I'm casting away the poet Wendy Cope. Do join us then.

Speaker 149:11

Hello, I'm Tez Ilias and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, Tez Talks. It'll make you laugh, cry and even question the cultural choices you have historically made. You can subscribe to Tez Talks on BBC Sounds.