This novel is set on the fictional Scottish island of Morvan and set amongst the hill walkers and shooting estate folk who enjoy this landscape. It’s a good yarn and I enjoyed reading it.
When I tell you that the land owner is called Lord Purdey and he has a couple of unsympathetic criminal gamekeepers, and that the ‘Further Reading’ at the end of the book consists solely of Inglorious, Feral, The Lynx and Us, the RaptorpersecutionUK blog and the Revive website then you may have a decent idea of where the author is coming from. So this is not a finely nuanced book – but it’s a good read. And it is the latest book to feature, for a few pages, the endangered and highly persecuted Hen Harrier.
The subjects of land ownership, access to land, nature conservation and rewilding, amongst others wrap up this story.
But there is much to be enjoyed in the accounts of hill walking and creeping around in the dark. The description of Lord Purdey’s family crest made me chuckle out loud.
Sky Dance: fighting for the wild in the Scottish Highlands by John D. Burns is published by Vertebrate Graphics Ltd.
Remarkable Birds by Mark Avery is published by Thames and Hudson – for reviews see here.
Inglorious: conflict in the uplands by Mark Avery is published by Bloomsbury – for reviews see here.
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Criminal gamekeepers……does that mean a grouse moor is involved……..a grouse moor on a Scottish island would be stretching it.
Dave – it’s a novel! A good novel – give it a read, why don’t you?
Day of the Jackel was a novel, a great novel Mark, but well researched!
Dave – I’ve always thought Don Quixote was marred by the less than detailed windmill descriptions and 100 years of Solitude was just wildly unrealistic. They are novels. Sky Dance seems truer to life to me than the Tory manifesto.
Lol to your final sentence.