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…

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….