About
A plain statement of what this is.
Wren & Quill is an independent publication about British nature writing. It is not attached to a publisher, a bookseller, a prize or a conservation body, and it is new, having started in 2026.
The name comes from the two things we care about. The wren is what you go out to look at, and the quill is what you do about it afterwards. Our layout is borrowed from the small literary quarterlies and the wood-engraved books that we admire: one column, wide margins and nothing that moves.
What we publish
We cover three things. Reading guides suggest what to pick up and in what order. Pieces on the genre’s history trace where its habits and quarrels came from. And practical essays such as how to keep a nature notebook are for anyone who would rather do it than read about it.
Who writes it
Articles are by the editors, unless another byline is shown. We use no invented names and do not make claims about ourselves that you could not check. We also accept contributed articles, and those carry their authors’ names, along with a clear note if anything about them is sponsored or commercially connected.
How we check things
Facts in our articles come from sources we have opened and read, and the main ones are linked at the end of each piece. Quotations are short, attributed and compared with a text before they go in. Public-domain works such as Gilbert White’s letters are checked against the full text; where a modern book is still in copyright we quote only a few words, taken from a named source that itself quotes the book. Our judgements about books are just that, and you are welcome to disagree.
If you find a mistake, please tell us and we will correct it.
Image credits
Each photograph is credited under the image where it appears. The full list is here. Photographs marked CC BY or CC BY-SA have been cropped and lightly toned by us. The ornaments and the logo were drawn for this site.
- Wren, home page. Photo: Alexis Lours, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and toned.
- Gilbert White’s House, Selborne. Photo: Peter Shimmon, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and toned.
- Loch Coire an Lochain, Cairngorms. Photo: Jasco, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and toned.
- Old Hall Marshes, Essex. Photo: Derek Voller, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and toned.
- Suilven, Sutherland. Photo: Andrew Tryon, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and toned.
- Snowdrops, Walsingham Abbey. Photo: Richard Humphrey, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and toned.
- Notebook. Photo: Jan Kahánek, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Tail-piece from A General History of Quadrupeds (1791). Thomas Bewick, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
