Standing up for Nature
Dear Anglian Water, I’m a customer of yours. Each year you send me a new bill for the year ahead and I glance at it, shrug, and you collect my money by direct debit. This year, you and I are going to have a little chat about that bill because I will be looking at…
Not strictly, or even loosely, speaking an environmental book, but now that Henry Morris has come out as the author of this and the side-splitting predecessor Diary of a Secret Tory MP (reviewed here) you can see why it deserves a review. There is the odd word or two about wildlife and how much the…
This is the smallest, least consequential, big announcement you will ever see. Alex Sayer claims that she has been working with some of ‘the top people in government’ to launch a new group at the Tory Party Conference in Manchester (aka ‘the end of the line’ conference). She claims that she has got friends –…
The elegant and beautiful Autumn Lady’s-tresses, Spiranthes spiralis, an exquisite orchid with a delicate spiral of flowers, has been discovered for the first time in Northern Ireland – by a young botanist out walking with his mum! Jake Dalzell, a third-year plant ecology student at University of Cambridge, was out walking with his mum Judith…
I was in two minds about whether to say yes to the publisher about sending me this book as I’m no expert on marine issues – but obviously I’m interested. The three things that persuaded me were (in no particular order); the cover (looks serious and beautiful), the words ‘past and present’ in the subtitle…
This is a smallish book, Ladybird book in size, of 80 pages, over 20 of which are occupied by Maxime Beck’s attractive illustrations. The text, by Elvira Werkman, covers a lot of ground very clearly in such a short space. I read most of the book, with pleasure, in one sitting. There is a useful…
This book is set a few miles from where I live – down the River Nene a few miles – around Oundle. The author makes regular walks, through the calendar year, and covers quite a lot of ground beside the river near his home. He sees much of the local Kingfishers, but much more besides….
This book takes the Japanese view of many mini-seasons of a few days and fits it to the natural rhythms of UK wildlife. It’s close to an approach tried before by Lev Parikian (Light Rains Sometimes Fall – reviewed here) but in my view, it’s done even more successfully here. The four authors took the…
This is the book of the series – and I loved the 5-episode TV series. But the TV series moved around the world and moved us back in time through hundreds of millions of years and explored our home through a liberal use of moving computer generated images. All that moving – it’s what television…
This is a wonderful book and it will undoubtedly be one of my top-10 books of the year for 2023. It is a self-published account of studies of this species, many of them led or enabled by the book’s author. And he did all this alongside his actual work being a research scientist in various…