You should take it as a measure of my fairness that even though I think large parts of this book are poorly argued (hardly argued at all, really) I believe that it is so wonderfully well written, and so exquisitely irritating, that it will certainly be vying for my book of the year for 2024. Luckily for me, it isn’t all irritating, much of it is very sensible, and almost undeniable. The great thing about the book is the quality of the writing and that is almost uniformly high. This book is a compilation of chapters by 13 individuals with another 13 shorter accounts as working examples of how ..read more

This book is one of a series of Little Books which are little books but they pack a big punch. They will remind many readers of Observer books because they are a similar size, but don’t let the small dimensions make you think that these books are lightweights. Not at all. This volume deals with the evolution (including a marine human-sized lobster-like beast), anatomy, reproduction, venom and webs of spiders and their appearances in human folklore etc. It’s packed with interesting facts. I didn’t know I wanted to be interested in spiders but this book persuaded me that I am. It’s a good book i ..read more

I have reviewed two of Derek Gow’s earlier books (Bringing Back the Beaver, September 2020; Birds, Beasts and Bedlam, July 2022) and both were very good books, but this is by some way a better book than either of those, which, to me, makes it an excellent book. You don’t have to be mad keen on seeing Wolves walking down your local High Street to enjoy this book. It is a riveting look at human attitudes to a contentious species. The book is as much a look in the mirror for us as it is a look at a top carnivore. I think that this book is written with a stronger view to inform and challenge us t ..read more

Every new New Naturalist is worth a look and this one is a hefty 614 pages of information, illustrations, photographs and graphs about smallish waterbodies, written by two acknowledged experts. It has to be said that the New Naturalists have regained their ability to produce well-illustrated books with clear colour photographs and fairly clear graphs which is what one should expect from a book that is still fairly expensive. I enjoyed Chapter 3 the most, on the history of Britain’s ponds but Chapter 4, on how the biology of ponds differs from other freshwater bodies, was a close runner up. We ..read more

I have to admire the author for bringing together a taxonomic list of 1100 birds found in the Western Palearctic (about 1 in 10 of the world’s birds) and explaining the origins of their English vernacular names and scientific names. If that is the book you want, then this is the book for you. I liked the author’s dry humour and self-deprecation. His Preface endeared him to me as a man with a good appreciation of his subject. And later on he writes (admits?) that he would probably never have started this book had it not been for the Covid lockdowns – how they changed our lives! This is a list ..read more

This is a very good book and a much needed antidote to the confident prognostications of doom and gloom. Sometimes I think it is slightly over optimistic, because the future does strike me as pretty worrying, but without hope for a better, or at least less apocalyptic, future, then there is little incentive to take the actions that we desperately need to take. I recommend that many people read this book, carefully and critically, and seek out the references too. The sensible and pretty clear accounts in the text are let down by some of the words on the cover, in my opinion. If I hadn’t had th ..read more

  It’s difficult being English, and Caroline Lucas has written a helpful book for the English to find their way and for the Irish, Welsh and Scots to cut us all a bit of slack. Being English is not necessarily being a racist skinhead with a cross of St George tattoo.  What is the left of centre route to English patriotism? I wouldn’t have expected such a very good guide from Caroline Lucas, but what would I know? For a long time she has been a stand-out MP with a great command of environmental matters (she has always impressed me and I have been a professional in this area) but this ..read more

This book is one of a series  of Little Books which are little books but they pack a big punch. They will remind many readers of Observer books because they are a similar size, but don’t let the small dimensions make you think that these books are lightweights. Not at all. This volume (I will come to Trees, Beetles and Spiders in future reviews) deals with evolution, biogeography, different taxa of butterflies, behaviour, ecology, anatomy, physiology, curious facts and the place of butterflies in our culture in 160 (little) pages. The book is well illustrated throughout and is written in ..read more

  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 some powerful, clear and perceptive accounts, remembrances and observations with a strong environmental flavour. Accounts of demonstrations and protests attended, bird flu on the Bass Rock, a Raven that croaks at you, a yellow hawkbit, thrift and guano. Bits of covid, family, friends ..read more

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 and clear on the identification features. I’m no expert (which is why foraging for fungi seems an exotic and exciting prospect to me) but it seems to me that this book gets the balance between encouragement and caution right. It is a very attractive book thanks to the inherent weirdness and beauty of the mushrooms ..read more