I very much enjoyed David Cobham’s previous book on raptors, A Sparrowhawk’s Lament. This new, slim offering has many of the same features that made that book such a pleasure to read; a love of raptors, a selection of anecdotes and a range of snippets of conversations with others involved in the subject. But this…
Category: BOOK REVIEWS
Sunday book review – The Hen Harrier (2nd edition) by the late Donald Watson
This is a classic book – and one which was given to me by a girlfriend as a Christmas present 40 years ago. It has been with me ever since and right now it sits within reach on the shelf above my desk. I was asked to write the Foreword for this book and was…
Sunday book review – The Red Squirrel by Scotland the Big Picture
This is a beautiful book with fantastic images. Most of the photos are by Neil McIntyre (with a few from James Shooter, Peter Cairns and Jackie Walker). Seen one Red Squirrel, seen them all? No! Despite this book having scores of Red Squirrel images the species is so photogenic and the images are so crisp…
Sunday book review – Flying High by Anneliese Emmans Dean
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This is a bird version of the same author’s Buzzing which was reviewed here three years ago. Anneliese is a poet, writer and performer and her bubbly personality comes across in her book. It consists of c50 double-page spreads of bird species – in each of which there is a poem and a bunch…
Sunday book review – Bumblebees by Richard Comont
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This book is another in the RSPB Spotlight series (see my review of Kingfishers) which is published by Bloomsbury. It’s a cracking book written, by an expert, in a thoroughly engaging and understandable manner. I’ve had this book for a while but picked it up to find out more about the Tree Bumblebees in…
Sunday book review – Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth
Scientists tend to be pretty sniffy about economists: economics seems like the pseudo-science which explains anything after it happens and yet predicts nothing about to happen. So why would anyone want to think like an economist? And yet economics is about values and about what sort of world we want to live in – something…
Bank holiday Monday book review – Stories from the Leopold Shack by Estella Leopold.
Aldo Leopold was a wildlife philosopher and guru, and is widely seen to have been a highly influential leader of environmental thinking in the USA. This book, written by one of his daughters, is a tribute to Leopold and an account of the family times in the shack in the Wisconsin woods which features in…
Sunday book review – Songs of Love & War by Dominic Couzens
It’s quite difficult to tell what this book is about from its title, its prologue or from its dust jacket. You might be misled into thinking that it is mostly about bird song, but it isn’t. It dips into various aspects of bird behaviour and mixes these accounts with the author’s personal observations of birds…
Sunday book review – The Butterflies of Sussex by Michael Blencowe and Neil Hulme
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This is a superb book and of interest to a much wider audience than those who are lucky enough to live in the butterfly-rich county of Sussex. The photographs are wonderful, the text is interesting, the graphics are intelligible and the data are voluminous. Everyone involved with this book deserves to feel proud; and to…
Sunday book review – Client Earth by James Thornton and Martin Goodman
Some of my best friends over the years have been lawyers – although, come to think of it, not that many – but I have always had a mistrust of the role of the courts in conservation and environmental matters. But over the last few years, in a time when government has no intention of…