These are collected writings from the pen and keyboard of Patrick Barkham, one of our best nature writers and foremost environmental journalists. They are taken from his Guardian pieces over the last 20 years, and they make a delightful book. Patrick writes so well and sees things that others would miss. I must have read…
Category: BOOK REVIEWS
Sunday book review – Fergus the Silent by Michael McCarthy
This is a novel about nature, nature conservation and nature conservationists. It is a cracking tale and I read the book’s 440 pages pretty quickly in order to find out what happened in the lives of the main protagonists and in the natural world around them. We move from behavioural ecologists in Oxford to seabird…
Sunday book review – Wild Waters by Susanne Masters
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This is a book for those who like swimming in the sea, lakes and rivers and might be interested in the wildlife that they come across, rather than a guide to aquatic life for the naturalist. On that basis I think it does a good job and works well. For those who plunge literally headlong…
This blog’s Books of the Year, 2021
Since my last Books of the Year review I have reviewed a further 50 books – it’s a record! Since these Books of the Year reviews are timed to come out to inform your Christmas book buying there are a few books which were published in 2020 that appear in this list but let’s still…
Stephen Moss’s 2021 Round-up of Nature books.
Stephen Moss is a naturalist, author and course leader of the MA Travel & Nature Writing at Bath Spa University. This year he published Skylarks with Rosie: A Somerset Spring (Saraband) and The Swan: A Biography, (Square Peg). Here is his annual round-up of books about wildlife, nature and the environment. @stephenmoss_tv [Mark writes: where…
Sunday book review – More Birds than Bullets by Geoffrey McMullan
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This book is a very good read. It’s packed with stories of birds and other wildlife seen whilst being a serving soldier. McMullan travelled widely as a soldier including serving in the first Gulf War which is a particular type of ‘travelling’. We are regaled with birding observations from the Middle East, Falklands, Germany and…
Sunday book review – Vagrancy in Birds by Alexander Lees and James Gilroy
This is a scientific investigation and account of why and how birds turn up a long way from where they might be expected. It’s the science behind the biology which enables twitching to be a hobby. Both the authors are academics, both are birders – it’s a potent combination. The book begins with a review…
Sunday book review – The Colour of Silence by Clare Newton.
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This approaches a coffee table book. Open the book at almost any page and you will find pleasant and arresting images, often close-ups of plants. And on many pages there are some thoughtful words, often quotes from the dead and famous. It’s a good book with which to spend some time. I enjoyed looking through…
I have a cold and a cough
They are just a cold and a cough because I’ve been sticking things up my nose and trying to find my tonsils to do lateral flow tests, all of which have been negative. I don’t think I’ve ever had hypochondiacal tendencies, I’m more likely to think and say ‘I expect it’s nothing’ but in these…
Sunday book review – Biography of a Fly by Jaap Robben and Paul Faassen
This small book is great fun. All human life, I mean dipteran life, is here; birth, sex, death, shit and a buzzard. It’s quirky but also very informative. It will make you laugh but it will also make you think. It’s a fly’s life – all 23 days of it. The words by Jaap Robben…