Two illustrated books — one a plea for Britain's vanishing birdlife, the other a journey back through deep time — have taken the top honours at the UK's foremost nature and conservation writing awards, in a year the judges said proved storytelling can still be "a powerful step towards awareness, action, and ultimately, hope".

The Book of Birds, by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane, was named the 2026 Wainwright Prize Book of the Year at a ceremony held on Thursday at the Elmley Nature Reserve in Kent, hosted by Times journalist and prize ambassador Henry Bird. The book, which the judges called "an utterly beautiful book to treasure", asks not what a bird is but who it is — a question with some urgency, given how many of Britain's bird species are now in decline.

Fact box: 2026 Wainwright Prize winners
Book of the Year: The Book of Birds — Jackie Morris & Robert Macfarlane

Children's Book of the Year: Otherlands — Thomas Halliday, illus. Gavin Scott

Nature Writing: Ancient: Reviving the Woods That Made Britain — Luke Barley

Conservation Writing: The Savage Landscape — Cal Flyn

Illustrative Books: The Book of Birds — Jackie Morris & Robert Macfarlane

Children's Fiction: The Danger of Small Things — Caryl Lewis

Children's Non-Fiction: Otherlands — Thomas Halliday, illus. Gavin Scott

Children's Picture Books: The Great Bear — Annie BookerIt is Macfarlane's second Wainwright win, following Underland in 2019 and a shortlisting in 2018 for The Lost Words. For Morris, whose watercolours have illustrated much of his recent work, it is a first.

The Children's Wainwright Prize Book of the Year went to Otherlands: An Illustrated Journey Through Earth's Lost Worlds, Thomas Halliday's adaptation of his own bestselling adult title, illustrated by Gavin Scott. Judges praised its "deeply knowledgeable" tour through the planet's extinct ecosystems, calling it a "breakthrough children's classic that will endure for decades". The original book was highly commended at the 2022 Wainwright Prize; its junior edition has now gone one better.

Woods, wilderness and a world without bees

Beneath the two headline prizes sat six category awards, each carrying its own argument about what nature writing is for. Luke Barley's Ancient: Reviving the Woods That Made Britain took the Nature Writing prize for its attempt to reacquaint readers with Britain's old woodland. Cal Flyn's The Savage Landscape, which asks how the world's most inhospitable places might yet be preserved, won Conservation Writing. The Book of Birds added the Illustrative Books category to its Book of the Year win.

Among the children's prizes, Caryl Lewis's The Danger of Small Things — set in a world where the bees have vanished — won Fiction, its premise rather less speculative than it might once have seemed. Annie Booker's The Great Bear, a picture book about human impact on the Arctic, won its category, and Otherlands added Non-Fiction to its overall win.

A clutch of highly commended titles rounded out the shortlists, among them Nicola Chester's Ghosts of the Farm, Julia Shaw's Green Crime, Suzanne Simard's When the Forest Breathes and Alison Pouliot's fungi study Funga Obscura.

A prize built on Wainwright's own values

Wainwright Prize director Alastair Giles said the entries showed "just how vital and vibrant nature and conservation writing has become, not only as a form of creative expression, but as a force for change". Six head judges oversaw the categories, among them 2024 winner Michael Malay, Guardian biodiversity reporter Phoebe Weston, and ornithologist and author Mya Rose-Craig — with the overall winners decided by a separate executive panel drawing on their recommendations.

Each overall winner receives £2,500; category winners £500. Awarded annually since 2014 in honour of Alfred Wainwright, the prize was founded by publisher Frances Lincoln with the National Trust, and continues to be backed by the RSPB, the Wildlife Trusts, National Geographic Kids and the National Literacy Trust, among others.

Last year's Book of the Year was Chloe Dalton's Raising Hare; the year before, Michael Malay's Late Light. This year, fittingly for a prize that takes its name from a man who spent a lifetime looking closely at the land beneath his feet, both top honours went to books that ask readers to look more closely still — at the birds outside the window, and at the vanished worlds beneath them.