Exhibition celebrates Essex wildlife writer

Items detailing the life and work of one of the UK’s most influential nature writers have gone on display in the first exhibition celebrating the impact of John Alec Baker.

Restless Brilliance: The Story of JA Baker and The Peregrine, at Chelmsford Museum, showcases, for the first time, items from the JA Baker Collection, which is held in the University’s Special Collections.

It has been co-curated by Dr Sarah Demelo, Curator (ESCALA, Art and Special Collections), and Sarah Harvey of Chelmsford Museum.

Featuring everything from personal photographs to detailed ornithological diaries, the exhibition reveals the man behind the book The Peregrine.

First published in 1967, Baker’s most famous book charts the story of a pair of peregrine falcons as he obsessively tracks them across the Essex countryside. It has been hailed as highly influential, with contemporary naturalists including Sir David Attenborough and Chris Packham singling it out for praise.

Speaking about his legacy, co-curators Dr Demelo and Sarah Harvey said: “JA Baker’s books had a profound influence on nature writing and on the survival of the peregrine in the UK. Nearly 60 years later, his prose continues to inspire, and yet we know relatively little about the man himself.

“We hope that visitors to Restless Brilliance will leave with a greater understanding of Baker’s evolution as a writer and ornithologist, as well as a newfound appreciation for Essex and its wildlife and biodiversity today.”

As well as viewing original documents, visitors to the exhibition can listen to extracts from the Sir David Attenborough-voiced audiobook of The Peregrine as well as recordings of JA Baker’s poetry, correspondence, and diaries made by local communities and environmental charities.

It also includes contributions from local artists who have responded to Baker’s works, such as an immersive soundscape of the Blackwater Estuary by Stuart Bowditch.

As part of the exhibition, conservationists and naturalists were asked to share how Baker’s writing has inspired them. Speaking about the impact of The Peregrine, wildlife broadcaster and conservationist Chris Packham said: “I was now enchanted and enraptured by its simple open beauty. Now I could feel that landscape, hear those winter fields, smell the mud, see the big skies.

“I was enveloped in a defined place, still stark, harsh, hard, but so deftly woven onto the page, with its delicate and evocative descriptions of a strange land. And significantly, the birds faded in their overall significance, became only players on pages of the very finest of prose, inspired by nature.”

Restless Brilliance is open to the public at Chelmsford Museum from 23 March to 3 November. Entry is free.