Stephen Moss is one of Britain’s leading nature writers, broadcasters and wildlife television producers. He was the founding producer of Springwatch, and has written a stream of wildlife books (eg see Tweet of the Day (with Brett Westwood), Natural Histories (also with Brett Westwood), and Wild Kingdom). A lifelong naturalist, he is passionate about communicating…
Category: BOOK REVIEWS
Sunday book review – The Seabird’s Cry by Adam Nicholson
Reviewed by Ian Carter Adam Nicolson’s father bought the Shiant Isles in the Hebrides when he was twenty: £1,300 for 500 acres including a rat-infested bothy and, at the right time of year, no small number of breeding seabirds. We are told he loved the place more than anywhere else in the world, a love…
Book review – Swifts and Swallows by Mike Unwin
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Reviewed by Ian Carter This is another book in the burgeoning RSPB Spotlight series, this time dealing with a duo of well-known and superficially similar species. I can see the merits of covering both birds in the same book but it seems odd that the House Martin misses out. It shares the association with our…
Sunday book review – Atlas of Poetic Botany by Francis Halle
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This is not an atlas and it has no poems, but it is certainly botanical. What we have here is a delightful book about tropical botany. Originally written in French, by a rainforest expert, this introduces the reader to a few dozen remarkable tropical plants, many of which are trees. The illustrations, by the author,…
Book review – Hedgehogs by James Lowen
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Reviewed by Ian Carter Aficionados of the humble, yet hard-pressed, Hedgehog are spoilt for choice these days. Hedgehog books are multiplying, as the animal itself becomes ever more difficult to track down. This mirrors a general trend in natural history writing. We have a rapidly expanding library of information at our finger-tips but, with every…
Sunday book review – On the Marshes by Carol Donaldson
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Reviewed by Ian Carter I’ve always liked books about alternative lifestyles, especially by people seeking out a gentler pace of life, more attuned to the natural environment. This is a good example and it’s a book I gradually warmed to as the author’s journey across the North Kent Marshes (contrary to the sub-title) unfolds. In…
Sunday book review – Climate Change and British Wildlife by Trevor Beebee
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This is an appropriately weighty book on a portentous subject. It is very attractively produced with many photographs of wildlife, habitats and people and a fine looking jacket by Carry Akroyd (although the jacket on my copy is slightly ill-fitting). The index is very good but the reference list is rather shorter than I expected….
Sunday book review – Landfill by Tim Dee
OK, so this book isn’t about landfill (although it is a bit). It is a book about gulls (but not just about gulls) and it is a book about the author (but not just about the author) and it is about Bristol (but not just about Bristol). And at this point I have to state…
Sunday book review – Riverwatch by Mark Everard
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This book by an ecologist and keen angler, is a series of short essays about life by, on and in the river through the year. It focuses on riverine processes and ecology, and flows very well. Each of the 60 short essays, five for each month, also has an illustration from the author. And he…
Book review: Bats by Nancy Jennings
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I like these RSPB Spotlight books (see reviews of Kingfishers and Bumblebees). This one is about bats. It’s quite a wide-ranging book with information about the 17 UK species but also about a range of the world’s other 1400 bats. It’s understandable that we don’t know a huge amount about bats – they are nocturnal,…