Ronald Mathias Lockley (1903 – 2000) was a pioneering Welsh ornithologist and naturalist who wrote over fifty books on natural history. Perhaps his best-known book is The Private Life of the Rabbit which provided the basis for the book and film Watership Down. The Golden Year follows a year in the life of Lockley's Inland Farm in South Wales in 1947. The year starts badly as he watches his entire ewe flock, including their sheep dog, swept away over the Welsh cliffs into the sea by an avalanche of snow. However, things improve and Lockley enjoys the life of a ‘peasant’. He works and fishes, he relaxes and watches clouds, he picks flowers for his herbarium and he writes. There is harmony, lyricism and joy in his life, and at the end of this ‘Golden Year’ Inland Farm sees a bumper harvest. Published by Readers Union and H.F. & G. Witherby, 1950. Drawings by Phyllida Lumsden This book is in fair condition, a clean copy with intact binding and all pages present. No dustjacket.