I sometimes wonder how many Guardian journalists have been for a walk in the countryside (without ear pods) in the last week. I guess the Guardian’s ignorant aloofness is better than the Telegraph’s ignorant familiarity although it’s a close run thing. At least the Guardian has a daily, tiny but valuable, account of some…
Category: BOOK REVIEWS
Sunday book review – Cuckoo by Cynthia Chris
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There are about 144 cuckoo species across the world including anis, coucals and roadrunners (I love the Greater Roadrunner!). Not all of them, by any means, are brood parasites but understandably that habit features prominently in this book as it is biologically fascinating and leads the Common Cuckoo into many cultural references. The six…
Sunday book review – The Little Book of Fungi by Britt A. Bunyard
It’s autumn and this weekend is Fungus Day in the UK and so one’s mind turns to the Kingdom of Fungi – just forget plants and animals for a day. This is one of a series of Little Books which are little books but they pack a big punch. They will remind many readers of…
Sunday book review – The Migration Ecology of Birds (2nd edition) by Ian Newton
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This second edition of a book first published in 2008 is a masterwork (but its price is beyond most individual readers and so it will mostly be read in academic libraries). I have the first edition on my shelves and a .pdf of this second edition in my inbox. This fully revised edition (rewritten with…
Sunday book review – Change Everything by Natalie Bennett
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I’ve had the .pdf of this book for many months and not got around to reading it until now. I wish I had got to it sooner as it is a good read and a good advert for green politics. I did turn to the last chapter, Greenism: A Complete Political Philosophy to start and…
Sunday book review – Robin Prytherch A Life with Buzzards edited by Lyndon Roberts
Robin Prytherch died in 2021 and we lost a stalwart of British and Bristol ornithology. As I grew up in Bristol as a teenage birder Robin Prytherch was a leading light in the Bristol Ornithological Club, he had designed its logo on the club’s founding in 1966 and the subject was a Pied-billed Grebe which…
Sunday book review – What The Wild Sea Can Be by Helen Scales
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Reviewed by Jonathan Wallace. Seen from space we are the Blue Planet. About 70% of the planet’s surface is covered by oceans and these waters are fundamental to life on Earth. The oceans were the cradle in which life began and they remain the home for vast numbers of species. They are also vital…
Sunday book review – Nature Notes by Tim Deane
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This is a compilation of quarterly articles which appeared in The Organic Grower between 2009 and 2021. The author is, or was, an organic farmer in south Devon. We often hear that farmers are stewards of the countryside and all that lives there – well a better case for that can be made for organic…
Sunday book review – The Last of Its Kind by Gisli Palsson
This is a heavily revised and expanded English translation of a book published in Icelandic in 2020. The translator, Anna Yates, is to be thanked, along with the author and publisher, for making such an interesting book accessible to English readers. I’m interested in extinction and the Great Auk is a famous extinction. Of course,…
Sunday book review – The Lie of the Land by Guy Shrubsole
This is Guy Shrubsole’s best book yet, despite the success of his excellent Who Owns England (reviewed here) and his book about soggy, slippery woods, The Lost Rainforests of Britain (reviewed here) because this book is about everything! It covers a lot of ground, all of it, because it is about land use and who…