Twelve Sheep go to Allen & Unwin UK

Allen & Unwin UK have acquired World rights in all languages from Marianne Gunn O’Connor in John Connell’s Twelve Sheep: Life Lessons from a Lambing Season. Twelve Sheep will be published in B-format hardback and ebook on April 4^th 2024, with an audio sublicense to WH Howes.

For John Connell, the lambing season on his County Longford farm begins in the autumn. In the sheep shed, he surveys the dozen females in his care and contemplates the work ahead as the season slowly turns to winter, then spring. Like the flock that he shepherds, Twelve Sheep is both simple and profound, a meditation on the rituals of farming life and a primer on the lessons that nature can teach us. As spring returns and the sheep and their lambs are released into the fields, skipping with joy, John recalls the words of Henry David Thoreau, reminding us to ‘live in each season as it passes.’

John Connell is a multi-award-winning author, film producer, investigative journalist and farmer. His documentary programs have won over a dozen international awards. His number-one bestselling memoir The Cow Book was awarded Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards in 2018. He lives in County Longford.

John Connell says,

‘I am just so thrilled to have Twelve Sheep published with the Allen & Unwin UK imprint of Atlantic Books. It’s a real dream come true after a number of years working on this book. As a farmer and a writer, I can’t wait to share my new work with the world.’

Clare Drysdale, Group Associate Publisher of Atlantic Books, says,

‘John Connell’s The Cow Book was an absolute sensation for Granta in 2018, winning awards and supergluing itself to the Irish Times top ten for months. We feel extremely fortunate to be working with John on his love letter to another cherished form of livestock. This is a book which will enlighten and inspire all who read it.’

‘A beautiful and soothing book, at once far-reaching and intimate, it serves as a sublime exhortation to stop and savour our precious and fleeting time on earth, to be grateful for the life we’re given.’ – Donal Ryan, author of The Queen of Dirt Island