Standing up for Nature
This is a sumptuous-looking book – truly beautiful. The photographs, by Jim Holden, are gorgeous. It’s a pleasure to flick through the pages, except that one doesn’t flick, one doesn’t want to miss any of them so even in a quick look through the book one finds oneself turning each page carefully. Iain Parkinson is…
This is a very attractive and interesting book about a species which, these days, I hardly ever see. When did you last see an Adder? I haven’t seen one for years and yet in my youth they were noticeably commoner. As were signs saying ‘Danger Adders’ which I always thought were put in places (eg…
This book is about a bird which seems to be trying quite hard to go extinct but which was, about a century ago, a very familiar part of the countryside throughout the UK. The Corncrake is a bird that once lived in long grass and other dense vegetation right across Europe and into Asia…
Peter Marren is friend of mine (although I haven’t clapped eyes on him for ages) and I have favourably reviewed several of his books here in the past (The Consolation of Nature, with Jeremy Mynott and Michael McCarthy, Chasing the Ghost, Where the Wild Thyme Blew, Rainbow Dust) and so it might not come as…
I went to a talk at the 2018 Bird Fair by the author when he talked about the preparation of this book – and now here it is. It’s a fine field guide. And it really is a field guide – a slim volume that can easily be pocketed in a coat and brought out…