James Rebanks is an upland sheep farmer. His father and grandfather were upland sheep farmers and, as far as he knows, this is all his family has done for six hundred years. He messed around at school. Couldn’t see the point of it: desperate to get back home to do farm work, which, when he left at sixteen with no qualifications, is exactly what he did full time. Then he ‘accidentally’ went to Oxford, graduating in history at the age of 25 as ‘possibly Magdalen’s only alumnus shepherd’, after which, despite potential distractions, he returned with pleasure to his life’s work – running a farm.

‘The Shepherd’s Life’ is his story. Actually, it is rather more than that. Cleverly, subtly, without ever showing seams, it presents two histories and a non-history. With chapters entitled Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring he describes a year in the life of a sheep farmer – his year, his neighbour’s year, what it’s like to be a shepherd. There's plenty of emotion and no pulled punches – it is what it is. Woven into this yearbook is the story of his life up to the time of writing, and that of his parents and grandparents – how he worshipped his grandfather and how his children worship theirs.

The non-history is the broader non-existent history of hill farmers. Marginalised people who have learned how to live on marginal land, Rebanks explains the extent to which hill farmers have been largely ignored by historians, politicians and the tourists who come to admire the scenery they have created, and why some farmers prefer it that way.

The Shepherd’s Life is an uncompromising, visceral, passionate, proud, positive and completely beautiful story about a beautiful way of life – one that is as delicate as it is strong, as vulnerable as it is resilient, and rooted in a way that is sadly fast disappearing. It is as much about sheep as it is about people. Rebanks I’m sure, would fail to see how you can sensibly have one without the other. Although Rebanks is a Lakeland farmer, Swaledale sheep play a lead role in this story (alongside Herdwicks) and the pattern of life he describes is mirrored over and again in Yorkshire’s Pennine hills, making it a uniquely relevant insight into Swaledale’s past, present and future.

The book starts with a prologue entitled ‘Hefted’, describing the way in which some farm animals get accustomed to a specific place on a fellside and instinctively know how to find their way back to its comforting familiarity. The accompanying photo is of a sheep but the subtext says otherwise.

If you wanted to quibble, you could say that the book underplays the domestic side of a Shepherd’s Life. But you wouldn’t want to. Not when you’ve been invited into such an intimate and precious place.