Category: Book review

Paul Sterry is no stranger to the readers of this blog, having written a string of guest blogs here over the years. He is a prolific author and photographer. This book describes the success of action, and well-informed inaction, in creating a wildlife refuge. Sterry’s half-acre garden sounds like a veritable oasis embedded in the…

  This book is beautifully written and for that reason I recommend that you read it. Now, to describe what it is about is a bit difficult. It’s certainly about places scattered across the world, including Wales, and it certainly has a lot of wildlife scattered through its pages but this book is about much…

I’m glad I read this book, and I’ve never read one quite like it. It’s an exploration of landscapes – how we portray them and how we feel about them. It ranges widely from the lunar landscape via Antarctica to East Anglia and from urban to rural.  The author is a landscape architect (and I…

Any book which starts with a quote from Audrey Hepburn is off to a good start with me. She said that to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow. No wonder there are now so many areas of artificial turf and gravel. But this book is an antidote to that as a ‘practical and…

Louise Gray’s previous book, The Ethical Carnivore was 5th in my books of the year for 2016 (see review here), and this follow-up, also on food, is a contender for a top-10 listing this year, I reckon. Eating fruit and vegetables doesn’t quite have the moral jeopardy attached to it  that surrounds eating an animal…