Category: Book review

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…