I can see a Red Kite from my Northamptonshire home every day of the year. I often pause to look at them even though I see them more often than I see a Buzzard or a Kestrel. I pause because they are just wonderful birds but also because they are a conservation success story –…
Category: BOOK REVIEWS
Sunday book review – Cruel Intentions by Alan Stewart
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This is the sequel to the excellent Calls from the Wild (reviewed here). PC Bob McKay gets to tackle more wildlife crimes such as Fox hunting and deer poaching. Grouse moors, and their shady managers, play large parts in this volume along with bothered Beavers, baited Badgers and disturbed dolphins. Alan Stewart writes very well…
Sunday book review – Collins Bird Guide (3rd edition) by Lars Svensson, Killian Mullarney and Dan Zetterstrom
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An identification guide is a functional thing – it exists so that the reader (or looker) can put a name, they hope the right name, to some creature. These are not the books that one picks up to read, or re-read over the years. They are the books one takes out into the field and…
Sunday book review – The Peregrine Falcon by Richard Sale and Steve Watson
This is a monumental book about what is regarded as the fastest animal on the planet (or flying over it). At over 500 pages, and amply and attractively illustrated, this is a tribute to and reference source about a marvellous bird. The brilliance of this bird is well captured in many of the photographs but…
Sunday book review – The Diary of a Secret Tory MP by Anon
This book did make me laugh out loud. And that’s quite an achievement because it attempts to satirise the awfulness of the current bunch of Tories in Westminster whose collective awfulness is almost beyond parody. Almost, but not actually as this author does a great job in exaggerating the behaviour and callousness and making it both…
This blog’s Books of the Year 2022
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It seems that I have reviewed 55 books on this blog this year – and a cracking bunch they were. Here they are in alphabetical order by author: When There Were Birds by Roy and Lesley Adkins – review Peak District by Penny Anderson – review Wild Green Wonders by Patrick Barkham – review The History of the World in 100…
Stephen Moss’s 2022 Round-up of Nature Books
Stephen Moss is a naturalist, author and course leader of the MA in Travel & Nature Writing at Bath Spa University. Here is his annual round-up of books about wildlife, nature and the environment. @stephenmoss_tv [Mark writes: where I have read and reviewed books mentioned by Stephen I have linked to my reviews]. For almost…
Book review – At the Very End of the Road by Phillip Edwards
I must apologise to the author and publisher of this book for carrying it around with me for months and not settling down to read it properly. I’m not sure why. It was partly that the cover didn’t engage me. It was partly that I’d never heard of the author. It was partly that I…
Book review – The Lost Rainforests of Britain by Guy Shrubsole
This is an exploration of an overlooked but very British habitat – the temperate rainforest. It’s understandable that it is much neglected, there’s not that much of it left and it is, as the name suggests, found in the soggiest places in the north and west of the UK. Its denizens are the fungi, ferns,…
Book review – Where the Wild Flowers Grow by Leif Bersweden
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This is one of those ‘questing’ books – on a bicycle this time. The author visits special places for plants in the UK and Ireland, with some interesting botanists, naturalists and landowners, and tells us about the places, people and wildlife. It’s a winning recipe and this is a very fine example of the genre….