Category: Book review

I was talking in Devon on Wednesday evening – and very nice it was too! Devon is big – big and grassy. Seen by some as a place to get through in order to cross the Tamar into Cornwall, there are reasons to stay and explore. Devon has two coasts and more coastline than most…

In this book Tim Birkhead has unscrambled the complexities of the biology of eggs with writing as smooth and rounded as an eggshell. As I sit writing this review I am listening to a dawn chorus dominated by Blackbird song, and I am thinking of the female Blackbird who is sitting on a nest containing…

You might be wondering what a book with this title is doing on this website. Well spotted! This is a book which uses the wacky idea that historical characters were tattooed, to tell some jokes. Some of the jokes are ones which you might not want to tell your grandma or your children as they…

This book was a disappointment. The basic structure is a chapter by chapter account of 15 species of UK raptor, each described in a different place, stretching from Hen Harriers on Orkney in Chapter 1 to Devon Sparrowhawks in Chapter 15. Wrapped into this structure is a tale of the life, and a previous journey,…