Shiny Archive Reading List #5 – Nature & Ecology
Compiled by Annabel We haven’t done one of our archive reading lists for a couple of years, but what better occasion to celebrate belatedly than Sir David Attenborough reaching his…
Biography & Memoir, Diaries
Ecology & Environment, Natural World
History & Politics, Feminism, Sociology
Non Fiction
Love, Anger & Betrayal: Just Stop Oil’s young climate campaigners, by Jonathan Porritt
Review by Peter Reason Sir Jonathon Espie Porritt, 2nd Baronet, CBE, Eton and Oxford; one might imagine him as a pillar of the British Establishment. Then you remember he was…
Thirst: In search of freshwater – Wellcome Collection 2025, ed. Ellen Johl
Review by Peter Reason This slender collection of writing around the theme of freshwater is published by the Wellcome Collection to accompany its current exhibition of the same name, which…
The Place of Tides by James Rebanks
Review by Liz Dexter The last humans will, like many of the first, hold to the coast, scratching a living from the sea and the shore. I imagine the last…
Bird School: A beginner in the wood by Adam Nicolson
Review by Peter Reason ‘The first time I met a bird close-up, it was dead. A raven.’ From this grab-your-attention first line and the evocative description of this encounter, I…
Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
Review by Peter Reason It is very unlikely that many readers of Shiny New Books have missed Robert Macfarlane’s new book. It has been reviewed in most of the major…
The Future of Gardens by Mark Lane
Review by Annabel Melville House’s ‘Futures’ series are short pocket-sized paperbacks that explore their subjects in essay format. I’ve previously reviewed two others for Shiny – The Future of Trust…
This Volcanic Isle: The Violent Processes that Forged the British Landscape, by Robert Muir-Wood
Review by Liz Dexter We now realize that throughout the past 66 million years, this land has been far from quiescent. It has been split by magma-filled cracks, wracked by…
Birds, Beasts and Bedlam: Turning My Farm into an Ark for Lost Species by Ben Gow
Review by Liz Dexter If you wish to bludgeon badgers or beavers or remove peregrine falcons and hen harrier chicks from their nests, a way can be found. If you…
The Ghost Lake by Wendy Pratt
Review by Peter Reason Ghost Lake is a paleolithic, extinct lake that lies between the Yorkshire Wolds and Scarborough. In prehistoric times it was a real lake, the centre of…
Ecology & Environment, Natural World
History & Politics, Feminism, Sociology
Non Fiction
Travel & the World
Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain by Corinne Fowler
In expanding and resourcing public understandings of the countryside’s colonial past, we can tell our islands’ stories and address colonial legacies from a position of knowledge rather than fear. Corinne…
Cairn by Kathleen Jamie
Review by Peter Reason I am sitting under the old apple tree in our Orchard on a sunny summer afternoon, looking over the meadow grass swaying in the light breeze,…
Deep Water: The World in the Ocean, by James Bradley
Review by Peter Reason James Bradley, the Australian novelist and essayist, chooses an apt epigraph from Arthur C. Clarke for his book: ‘How inappropriate to call this planet “Earth”, when…
Human Origins: A Short History, by Sarah Wild
Review by Liz Dexter I have […] tried to highlight how much our understanding of human origins has changed – and continues to change – and how, in some ways,…
Local: A Search for Nearby Nature and Wilderness by Alastair Humphreys
We have just this one tiny planet to live on, now and for the foreseeable future. We must care for it, and use its resources wisely, sustainability, and fairly. If…
The Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding Big and Small, by Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell
Reviewed by Liz Dexter Even if the ‘Rewilding your Garden’ chapter seems the only one of practical use to you – or, indeed, if you only have a window box…
Landscapes of Silence: From Childhood to the Arctic, by Hugh Brody
Review by Peter Reason On the first page of Landscapes of Silence is a list of the many words for snow in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit hunters and…
Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World: Essays, by Barry Lopez
Review by Peter Reason The late Barry Lopez is regarded by many as the doyen of travel and nature writers – although he and many others dislike these terms, preferring…
Darkness Manifesto: How light pollution threatens the ancient rhythms of life, by Johan Eklöf
Translated by Elizabeth DeNoma Review by Peter Reason I leave my front door late one evening and walk along the driveway we share with our neighbours towards the narrow unlit…
The Accidental Detectorist by Nigel Richardson
Review by Julie Barham If you are interested in the process of finding objects from the past, this book, subtitled “Uncovering an Underground Obsession” will probably draw you in with…
Fen, Bog and Swamp: A short history of peatland destruction and its role in the climate crisis, by Annie Proulx
Review by Peter Reason I used to keep my little yacht Coral, companion of many voyages and pilgrimages, on trot moorings on the Cattewater in Plymouth. On the further side…
The Secret Life of Fungi: Discoveries from a Hidden World by Aliya Whiteley
Review by Liz Dexter Aliya Whiteley writes about the natural world in essays and fiction, grew up in North Devon and now lives in West Sussex, both rural areas replete…
This Sacred Life: Humanity’s place in a wounded world by Norman Wirzba
Review by Peter Reason What does it mean to see the world, and life on Earth, as sacred? How might this change our approach to life? These are questions that…
The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis by Amitav Ghosh
Review by Peter Reason When I was a small child at primary school, we celebrated Empire Day. Children were invited—expected—to take a Union Flag to school and wave it around….