Category: Book review

  Kathleen Jamie is Scotland’s National Poet or Makar, and this book is a collection of personal notes, prose poems, micro-essays and fragments. The idea is that they are arranged here like the stones of a cairn.  I was slightly nervous that this might be too ‘literary’ for me – but it wasn’t. Here are…

Mushrooms are fascinating for so many reasons, but not the least of them is that you can eat many of them with relish but if you eat some of them they may constitute your last meal. And so a book nudging you towards picking and using mushrooms has to be pretty strong on the warnings…

Now, as you might know, Chris Packham is a mate of mine but let’s be clear, he does know his birds, although like the rest of us he does make mistakes. Ask him (no don’t, please!) about the bird squashed on the road that he thought was a [I’m not going to tell you] which…

I liked this book very much. It is written by someone about my age (slightly older) who has travelled to many of the same places as I have at similar times of his life but I don’t think you would have to have been in Oxford, the Camargue or the Coto Donana at those times…

I’m not a massive supporter of the cult of youth as I feel it’s a stage of life that is best grown out of. But this book, from this young (early 30s) man, is a joy. Really! The author is enthusiastic about his job as a ranger at the National Trust’s site of Wicken Fen…