July 28, 2020 Three Wainwright Prize Nominees: Books by Patrick Barkham, Patrick Laurie & Jini Reddy Reviewed by Rebecca Foster The Wainwright Prize longlists for writing on UK nature and global conservation themes were announced in early June and will…
July 28, 2020 Notes From An Apocalypse by Mark O’Connell Review by Annabel O’Connell is an Irish journalist who won the Wellcome Book Prize for his previous title, To Be a Machine (which I…
July 9, 2020 Into the Tangled Bank by Lev Parikian Review by Liz Dexter Lev Parikian is a conductor and, more recently, a birdwatcher, and you might have seen or read his book on…
July 2, 2020 Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty Reviewed by Rebecca Foster When the Wainwright Prize longlists (for writing on UK nature and global conservation themes) were announced in early June, Dara…
June 11, 2020 Wayfinding by Michael Bond Review by Terence Jagger I found this book absolutely fascinating. I have always been fairly confident in my abilities as a navigator (though with…
June 2, 2020 Greenery: Journeys in Springtime by Tim Dee (2020) Review by Rebecca Foster From the Cape of Good Hope to the Arctic Circle, Dee tracks the spring as it travels north. From first…
May 28, 2020 Tracks: Walking the Ancient Landscapes of Britain by Philip Hughes Softback review by Liz Dexter This quietly stunning book will appeal to anyone interested in art, landscape, walking, geology, geography, maps and ancient monuments….
May 26, 2020 Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils by David Farrier Review by Peter Reason In 2013, a spring storm uncovered, on the shores of Norfolk, the oldest traces of humanity discovered outside Africa: fossil…
April 16, 2020 Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild by Lucy Jones Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Back in early March, just before literary events started being cancelled due to coronavirus, I had the good fortune to…
April 14, 2020 The Birds They Sang: Birds and People in Life and Art by Stanisław Łubieński Translated from Polish by Bill Johnston Review by Peter Reason Stanisław Łubieński first began observing birds in childhood through Soviet binoculars. Later, he took…
April 9, 2020 Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer Review by Peter Reason There has been a lot of interest recently in the idea of ‘rewilding’, expressed for example in Isabella Tree’s Wilding:…
March 5, 2020 Red Sixty Seven, curated by Kit Jewitt Review by Peter Reason When I was a small boy, back in the 1950s, I remember going on Sunday School trips to the seaside….
January 21, 2020 Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World by Marcia Bjornerud Review by Peter Reason I have on my desk three pieces of rock, collected during my ecological pilgrimage on in the west coast of…
October 17, 2019 The Summer Isles by Philip Marsden Reviewed by Peter Reason The Summer Isles is an account of a single-handed voyage from the south coast of England round the west of…
October 10, 2019 Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie Review by Peter Reason Kathleen Jamie is primarily known as a poet, but her prose writing is eagerly anticipated and widely acclaimed. Surfacing is…
August 13, 2019 Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places by Julian Hoffman Reviewed by Rebecca Foster More so than ever, I’m convinced that the purpose of literature is to educate us about the most pressing issues…
August 6, 2019 The Seafarers: A Journey Among Birds by Stephen Rutt Review by Liz Dexter This charming and perceptive book opens with a gut-wrenching account of taking off in a Very Small Plane from Kirkwall…
July 23, 2019 The Dinosaurs Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution is Rewriting History by Michael J Benton Reviewed by Liz Dexter Michael J. Benton is Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology and head of the Palaeontology Research Group at the University of Bristol,…
July 18, 2019 The Frayed Atlantic Edge by David Gange Reviewed by Peter Reason David Gange is historian at the University of Birmingham and a passion for mountains and wild water. Well before The…
July 11, 2019 This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook Edited by: Farrell, Clare, Alison Green, Sam Knights, and William Skeaping Review by Peter Reason There cannot be many followers of Shiny New Books…
June 18, 2019 Birds in the Ancient World by Jeremy Mynott Review by Liz Dexter Jeremy Mynott is both a classical scholar and a writer on birds, and his love and deep knowledge of both…
May 21, 2019 The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology by Mark Boyle Reviewed by Rebecca Foster It’s common practice nowadays, when publicizing a book review published in an online venue, to tag the author on social…
May 9, 2019 Horizon by Barry Lopez Review by Peter Reason Barry Lopez is one of the greats of ‘nature writing’ (although he dislikes the term, as it seems do most…
March 21, 2019 The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells Review by Peter Reason I am approaching my seventy fifth birthday. As I look back, I see my life has been overshadowed by the…
February 21, 2019 Europe: A Natural History by Tim Flannery Review by Peter Reason A natural history, Tim Flannery tells us, encompasses both the natural and the human worlds. This book attends to three…
