Nicola was born in Oxford and brought up in a farming family in Wiltshire. At an early age she started to work on the farm with her father and with her younger sister ran the farm from the age of seventeen. Her great love of the countryside, seen and unseen, led her to capture it on film for local press and magazines and to accompany those pictures with words.
Her first book, THE BOOK OF SPELLS published in 1998, was a best seller for Simon and Schuster, followed by SPELLS AND CHARMS in 1999, illustrated with her photographs, for Godsfield.
She also published the first farmers’ calendar in 1999 – a publication which has been going strong ever since! Nicola has three children and now lives on a working organic small-holding.
Nicola’s latest book is called BEHIND THE HEDGE, (co-written with John Hitchens) with the sub-head “Where our food comes from: a pocket guide to British farming”. This offers an easy to follow guide showing the different ways in which our food is produced and how this shapes the nature of the British countryside.
It is a “must-have” handbook for anyone walking or driving through the countryside. Never again will the reader mistake a field of wheat for one of barley, or an Aberdeen Angus cow for a Hereford!