Category: BOOK REVIEWS

I’ve never been to Italy despite the food and the culture, and that is partly because I was rather of the mind that it wasn’t a great place for wildlife. I think that may have been based on an overly bird-centric view of wildlife as Spain, Greece and the former Yugoslavia exert stronger pulls for…

The author worked in my directorate at the RSPB for many years and so I know him and I know he knows this subject well. I didn’t know that he could write as well as he does here, though. Simon admits to being a town planner in his first words in this book and he…

The author spends a spring and summer trying to see all the butterflies that occur in Denmark. She doesn’t seem to know quite why she wants to do this but she does. And she starts from a position of a great deal of ignorance about the 60+ species on her must-see list. The butterflies of…

This is a fascinating account of the wonders of the Pacific kelp forests that run from Baja California to Alaska (and in the southern hemisphere off Chile). Like many of the world’s other great habitats, this one is under threat but we hear of a motley, diverse group of individuals who are doing their best…

I wish this book had been available through 2025 when I was carrying out a year-long bioblitz of my garden. The Diptera is a very species-rich taxon, perhaps even richer than Coleoptera in world terms, and there are over 7000 UK species.  I found them difficult to catch, difficult to photograph and then difficult to…

  I guess I read and review a new book about wolves every year which is quite interesting in itself since there aren’t any wolves in the UK. But we are fascinated by wolves as a species and we tend to love them or hate them. Some hanker after restoring the Grey Wolf to the…

One of the best things about Galloway is that it is off the beaten track and that few people go there – they all head further north or further south – but this is such a welcoming book, with gorgeous illustrations of landscapes and inviting tales of interesting walks with wildlife, beaches, good scenery and…

How many marine crustaceans are there around our coasts? Can you guess? No? Well maybe this book isn’t for you unless you are on the cusp of becoming a Pan Species Lister (see here). There are about 2,600 marine crustaceans out of a UK species total of about 3,800 crustacean species. Most of these marine…

I enjoyed much of this book, especially the writing, and I dare say it will be greatly appreciated by many, but I found that it was rather undermined by some structural issues and some choices that seem to have been made about its scope and reach. It may be that this is an example of…

The book, Tarka the Otter, will be 100 years of age next year. This book is the tale of Otters, and waterways in the part of Devon where Tarka was set, and written. This is, in my opinion, Ian Parsons’s best book to date. Ian’s Introduction is very good. He set the scene really well…