Alan Stewart MBE is a retired police inspector with a wealth of experience in investigating wildlife crime. This is his fourth book on the subject. Here is a quote from the author’s introduction ‘On driven grouse moors there is little evidence of change. While the licensing of shoots may help, the only real solution…
Category: BOOK REVIEWS
Some books
It is around now that this blog would normally list its books of the year, but this year you’ll have to wait until the very end of the year for that list. However, it is surely worth noting that this Christmas, and every other day from now on, there is quite a choice of books…
Sunday book review – A History of Birds by Simon Wills
This book is similar in some ways to that reviewed earlier this morning – this one is cheaper and better. Simon Willis chooses 30 species (eg Blue Tit, Lapwing) and groups of birds (eagles, flamingos) and tells us interesting things about them and about people connected to them. This book is beautifully illustrated with…
Sunday book review – Birdmania by Bernd Brunner
This book is really quite annoying. It’s annoying because it has some really good parts but it lacks structure of any sort. Most sentences are perfect but many paragraphs are a collection of sentences that are poorly linked together. I often got to the end of a paragraph and went back to try to…
The Well-Read Naturalist (2)
Comments Off on The Well-Read Naturalist (2)
I have to admit that John (Johannes) Riutta’s excellent website, The Well-Read Naturalist, first came to my attention when he wrote a very kind review of my A Message from Martha, but I have been dipping into it regularly ever since. I like the ethos of the site ‘The Well-read Naturalist publishes reviews and news…
Sunday book review – Land of Plenty by Charlie Pye-Smith
This is an interesting and well-written book about farming and food. It is definitely in the farmer-sympathetic camp, which is fine but also gets close to being in the ‘agriculture is doing well’ camp which I find a little irritating. But I learned a lot from it and it is a good read. The format…
Behind More Binoculars
Published this week Use code BMB30 with Pelagic to get 30% discount.
Sunday book review – Islander by Patrick Barkham
This is a tour from one island to the next, starting with the Isle of Man and travelling to smaller and smaller islands around the British coast until ending on a very small and uninhabited island in the Essex saltmarshes. Patrick Barkham writes so well that I’d really like to go on an actual journey…
Sunday book review – Winter Birds by Lars Jonsson
Reviewed by Ian Carter When I was first getting interested in wildlife in the 1980s, Lars Jonsson was seen almost as a cult figure by young birders. He had published a series of slimline fieldguides based on different habitats (mountains, sea coast etc) and these were later updated and amalgamated into one book covering all…
Feral review, highly commended – Peter Anderton
This blog’s recent writing competition was to write a review of George Monbiot’s book Feral. The entries were judged by John Riutta, The Well-read Naturalist, Ian Carter and myself. The winning entry by Kerrie Gardner was posted on Sunday. Two more entries were highly commended and this is the second of them, by Peter Anderton….