Category: Book review

I opened this book with some trepidation because I wanted to like it and wasn’t sure that I would: I needn’t have worried. This book gives a thorough and somewhat engaging account of the protection of landscape beauty in the UK and is written by someone who has played a major and positive part in…

This book has a clever title and a lovely cover by Darren Woodhead. Its author is also a lovely guy: a good broadcaster, great conversationalist and a real laugh. However, despite all that, I’m not won over by the book. It is also based on a clever idea – take a dozen birds and write…

A collection of writings about spring – what could be nicer? This book is one of four on the seasons.  Are there really four seasons, I wonder? I’m not totally sure that summer exists – doesn’t spring (March-June) just fade into autumn (July- December) and then there is a bit of winter (January and February),…

Kevin Parr wrote the book that I selected as my favourite of 2014, The Twitch – that one was a black comedy, though very funny, I thought, about a murderous twitcher. This book is very different, and is about Parr’s greater love – fishing. And it’s not a laddish tale of bonking, drinking and murder…

I’ve lived with House Martins in the streets where I live, and sometimes next door, but never on my home, for more than half my life. Their return, ahead of the screaming Swifts, is looked for and appreciated when it happens. And they are there, chirrupping in flight, all summer long and sometimes daring to…