Standing up for Nature
This is a good guide to The Fens which takes a sensible approach to its nature. It describes the history of this low-lying expanse through which the Great Ouse, Nene, Welland and Witham used to wiggle their way but now take more man-decided straighter routes on their ways to The Wash. Maybe 1% of the…
This is a good tale about the ups and downs of being a novice, but effective, environmental campaigner. It’s almost a ‘how to’ guide and it is based on the author’s experience of campaigning to get bird bricks (used by Swifts and other species) mandated as parts of new buildings. It is a case study…
The author is a proper botanist (see my review of a very different earlier book he co-authored) and he doesn’t live very far away from me – down the Nene Valley in a place where it is probably mostly called the ‘Neen’ whereas up here we call it the ‘Nenn’ but I have never…
I stopped the car in a pleasant valley in West Wales last Monday and listened to Start the Week which had a very environmental content with Robert Macfarlane plugging his new book, Is a River Alive?, lawyer Monica Feria-Tinta talking about protecting habitats and plugging her book, A Barrister for the Earth, and Patrick Galbraith…
I wrote a favourable review about this book – click here – and I now see that the book has stirred up an interesting strong response from Right to Roam – click here. It’s difficult for a reader to choose sides in a dispute like this as one rarely knows the ins and outs of…
This book melds the poetry of the late D.J. O’Sullivan with the photographic images of Sheena Jolley – it’s a very successful and satisfying combination. O’Sullivan died in 1993 and, I have to confess, his name meant nothing to me but I learn he was a lighthouse keeper with an eye for wildlife and a…
This book’s title makes it sound like a field guide to clouds, and to some extent it is, but, what a field guide! The illustrations are by the likes of Constable, Doré, Turner, Monet, Courbet and many others. But it really is about clouds as the author is an atmospheric scientist and former editor-in-chief of…
The European Beaver is a Marmite species – people do seem either to love it or hate it. And by ‘hate’ I am not exaggerating ‘mildly dislike’; some people really do hate it. Considering this is a species that has been absent from the UK for centuries and is still found only in relatively few…
There are times, particularly if I listen to the news, read a paper or scroll through social media when I think that the the UK is considerably more beastly than it used to be and that the same applies to the world at large. But this book is about the role that animals play in…
This is a timely book as this native UK (and Ireland) species is making a strong comeback and so may be appearing in a wood near you soon. Pine Martens are spreading on their own once released from the pressure of illegal killing but also because they are being reintroduced in several parts of their…