Category: Book review

This slim volume of little more than 100 pages addresses the big questions of life on Earth. Not, ‘Shall we go to the pub?’ but ‘Why are there so many species and why are there more in some places than others?’. The author is a proper biologist and he writes this book to explain how…

This is a big book full of beauty. It has over 400 A4 pages of paintings of over 250 UK fungi. And every one of those pages holds the eye because of the amazing complexity of the fungi and the artist’s skill. From Scarlet Waxcap to Warlock’s Butter, and from Giant Puffball to Lemon Disco,…

  While breakfasting on 14 January, I glanced out the window and saw a Merlin flash past over my Northamptonshire garden at fence-top height. The sighting might have been an eighth of a second or perhaps less but our smallest falcon was unmistakable and put a smile on my face for the rest of the…

This is a terrific book – highly recommended! I could stop there but maybe you’d like to know a bit more. The author writes beautifully and I knew he had me after the first two pages of the Prologue. I’d bet that the author makes a good first impression in person too, but he certainly…

Forty years ago I shared an office in Oxford with the author of this book and he had, even then, clocked up an impressive range of island visits. He has kept going ever since and this book chronicles visits to islands in all five of Earth’s oceans. Mike Brooke’s visits to islands ranged from very…