This is a handbook and I think it will be a very useful handbook for local authority planners and ecologists who want to do a good job for nature. It is not a book to read for pleasure but that’s simply because it’s a book to read for information and knowledge. For example, Chapter 5’s…
Category: BOOK REVIEWS
Sunday book review – The Tree Atlas by Matthew Collins with Thomas Rutter
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This is a lovely book – beautiful trees, photographed well (it helps that they don’t run around I guess) and in gorgeous surroundings. Fifty types of tree from across the world are selected and that simple idea works very well. We are given portraits of individual trees and landscapes clothed in their masses as well…
Sunday book review – The Joy of Birdwatching (various authors)
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Not intended, I’m sure, as a sequel to the 1972 classic, The Joy of Sex, but potentially a book to get the pulse racing if you are keen to see lots of species of bird all over the world. I’ve seen c1400 or so, a great many of them whilst working, which means there are…
Sunday book review – Great Misconceptions edited by Ian Parsons
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This is a collection of essays about rewilding. I wrote what has been placed as the last chapter so I am reviewing this book without considering the last chapter. I hadn’t seen any of the other dozen chapters until the book arrived in the post last week. The chapters have been brought together by Ian…
Sunday book review – The Peregrine Thief by Alan Stewart
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This is the final book in Alan Stewart’s trilogy of the exploits of Detective Sergeant Bob McKay – see reviews of Calls from the Wild and Cruel Intentions. The author wrote several non-fiction books (eg Killing by Proxy) about wildlife crime before turning to the freedom that fiction gives an author to fill in the…
Sunday book review – Small Game Hunter by Peter Smithers
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We are asked ‘Have you ever wondered what entomologists do?‘ and I have, and I enjoyed finding out what this eminent entomologist (a vice-president of the Royal Entomological Society) has done. It seems to me, he has had a lot of fun and his enthusiasm is infectious. But his main field of research has…
Sunday book review – Solvable by Susan Solomon
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We all need hope, and one of the ways of finding it is to realise that many apparently hopeless environmental problems have been sorted out by human ingenuity and determination. That’s what this book does with five detailed examples: smog, ozone depletion, pesticides, lead and those greenhouse gases called HFCs. And the last chapter makes…
Sunday book review – The Good Slug Guide by Jo Kirby
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Do not be fooled by the jokey title, shortish length and smallish pages, this is not a lightweight book – it is a very solid one. By the time I had read the four-page Introduction I was hooked and a gross of pages later I had become engrossed. This is a very, very good book….
Sunday book review – Landscape Change in the Scottish Highlands by James Fenton
This is a stimulating book which takes an independent view of Scotland’s Highland landscape. The author challenges the current orthodoxy (is it?) that most of the Highlands was not so long ago wooded and that restoring woodland cover, the great Forest of Caledon, should be an aim of rewilding and nature conservation. No matter…
Sunday book review – The Tories – a tragedy by Henry Morris
This book has little to do with wildlife and its conservation, just like two of its characters, Therese Coffey and her bestie, Liz Truss. However, unlike the late unlamented Secretaries of State for the Environment, Henry Morris, is a friend of wildlife and a friend of mine so I’ll happily plug his latest excellent book…