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 100th birthday on May 8th 2026.
So, here are selected highlights from the many nature and ecology titles we’ve reviewed over the years – they’re a firm favourite topic for us, hence the long list! The links in each title will take you to the full original review.
The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells (2019)
In 2017 Wallace-Wells published an article in New York Magazine ‘peering beyond scientific reticence’ to argue that the climate catastrophe is ‘I promise you, worse than you think.’ It was a punchy piece that attracted considerable criticism for being alarmist and for selecting evidence to suit his argument. When I read it myself, having watched humanity fail to respond to the gathering crisis for so many years, I thought his major theme was uncontrovertibly true. The book is a development of that article. The book details the many ways in which climate change is impacting life on Earth far faster and more profoundly than public discourse accepts. This book is important because it contributes to breaking the taboo against discussing the seriousness of our predicament: to repeat, it is ‘worse, much worse, than most of us think’. It is a contribution to the emerging debate about the profound existential threat posed by climate change and by our collective failure to make anything like an adequate response; a debate we must learn to have. Peter Reason
Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells by Helen Scales (2015)
Helen Scales is a marine biologist. Her first book, Poseidon’s Steed, was about seahorses; those special little sea creatures where the males bear the young. In it, she not only wrote about the biology of these creatures, but also their place in culture and mythology. In Spirals in Time, she has turned her interests into a much larger phylum – that of seashell-making molluscs – and similarly gives us much more than a purely biological appreciation of them. An important distinguishing characteristic of a mollusc is that it only ever makes a single shell, unlike crustaceans for instance. They just keep expanding the shell by adding more, so ‘the pointy tip or innermost whorl is the mollusc’s juvenile shell.’ Scales also talks about the cultural aspects of seashells from currency to fashion, returning to the serious scientific topic of ocean acidification, concluding with a cautionary note about shell collecting – the majority of shells sold at the seaside are imported, the creatures are killed for their shells. I absolutely loved the way she introduced all the stories that contrast with the biology into the text, making this a book to recommend to a far wider audience than just those who like the natural world. Annabel
Into the Tangled Bank by Lev Parikian (2020)
This is a very pretty and enticing book with a lovely cover which includes birds, butterflies, insects, plants and a … crisp packet, because it’s essentially a book about British people’s relationship with nature. The British people of whom he speaks include himself and other serious hobbyists, experts, guides, the general public and a few nature writers from the past whose homes he can visit, including Charles Darwin’s house. Something I also really liked was Parikian’s concentration on talking about female scientists, naturalists and photographers. This did stand out, emphasising that lots of people don’t do this, but it was very refreshing. With an index to help you along and a good structure, this is a lovely and attractive read that will hopefully appeal to the general reader as well as the nature-lover. He certainly approaches it from a true amateur viewpoint, with his tatty notebook and shock at the number of moths there are, and that makes it less intimidating and more approachable. Liz Dexter
Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places by Julian Hoffman (2019)
All around there is an increasing sense of urgency: we must wake up to the climate crisis and do something about it right away, and in that context, nature writing and environmental fiction can no longer be minor subgenres; they must lead the way in showing us our duty towards the more-than-human world. From the Kent marshes to the Coral Triangle off Indonesia, Hoffman discovers the situation on the ground and talks to the people who are involved in protecting places at risk of destruction. Reassuringly, these aren’t usually genius scientists or well-funded heroes, but ordinary citizens who are concerned about preserving the nearby sites that mean something to them. The connections – or conflicts – between progress, traditions and conservation crises are made plain. For instance, bovine drugs have led to a worldwide decline in vulture populations, which has rendered the ritual of sky burial nearly obsolete. Irreplaceable is an elegy of sorts, but, more importantly, it’s a call to arms. By profiling seemingly average places and the people who love them, it makes nature preservation accessible. It takes local concerns seriously, yet its scope is international – making it more useful than a UK- or US-specific conservation guide. But what truly lifts Hoffman’s work above most recent nature books is the exquisite prose. Rebecca Foster
A Message From Martha by Mark Avery (2014)
On 1 September, 1914, the world’s last Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) died in Cincinnati Zoo. Her name was Martha, and Mark Avery’s book tells us why this happened, why it matters, and offers some lessons about the future, making sure we do not make these mistakes again. What makes the case of the Passenger Pigeon so special? The answer is simple – the speed and scale of the extinction. The passenger pigeon was a striking, sizeable bird, with the normal greys and whites of the pigeon/dove family augmented by a rosy red breast and some green and gold. We know a lot about the passenger pigeon because it was so common, and it was not only mentioned but studied by many trained observers and travellers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; there are many credible, attested accounts of their huge flocks darkening the skies and breaking the branches of mature trees at their roosts. Inevitably, they were hunted for food – they tasted good and were easy to shoot or catch at their breeding colonies, which, combined with the rapid felling of the beech and oak woods of the eastern US for agriculture, caused a dramatic decline in numbers. Avery writes passionately about this extinction, and entertainingly describes his six week road trip through the US in search of the story. In the UK, the Turtle Dove is heading the same way, though there are efforts to save it. Terence Jagger
Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison (2016)
Melissa Harrison is all for getting out — though she doesn’t venture north of Shrewsbury– and presents, in this charming book, an account of four walks in the English countryside at different times of the year. It’s a deceptively simple idea, but one which allows her to demonstrate her knowledge of the countryside and her deep understanding of the forces which have made it what it is. In this short (barely 100 pages) book, the four walks, in Wicken Fen, Shropshire, The Darent valley and Dartmoor are each covered in a discursive ramble, taking in natural lore, local history and language, and the impact of rain on the landscape. In this short (barely 100 pages) book, the four walks, in Wicken Fen, Shropshire, The Darent valley and Dartmoor are each covered in a discursive ramble, taking in natural lore, local history and language, and the impact of rain on the landscape. You can read this book in a couple of hours, but it will stay with you much longer, and I guarantee it will make you want to get out and about. I’ve just looked outside: it’s raining. Rob Spence
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer (2020)
There has been a lot of interest recently in the idea of ‘rewilding’. Books on the subject argue that human intervention in the natural world has been excessive and harmful for both humans and other creatures; that the more than human world should be more left to its own self-willed, self-maintaining processes in order to return to a healthy state. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a scientifically trained botanist and a Native American, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. As a university teacher she is shocked when, asking her undergraduate students about human interactions with nature, she discovers that nearly every one ‘said confidently that humans and nature were a bad mix’ and that they could not even imagine what beneficial relations between their species and others might look like’. Her book, drawing on both scientific and indigenous traditions, makes a sustained case for reciprocity between humans and the land, for relationships based on mutual respect, care, and gratitude. This is a serious book about knowledge and worldviews and the destructive impact of modern ways of life. It is also a charming book—charming in every sense of that word. First, it is full of wonderful, engaging stories about Kimmerer’s family, her people and their history, her life with her daughters as they grow up, collecting maple sugar, growing beans, clearing ponds. It is charming also in the sense of casting a spell: reading, one is drawn into Kimmerer’s worldview where reciprocity is at the heart of life and it is good manners to introduce yourself to plants. This book is among the finest I have read for a long time. Please put it on your list. Peter Reason
The Circling Sky: On Nature and Belonging in an Ancient Forest by Neil Ansell (2021)
Neil Ansell grew up near the New Forest. On Remembrance Sunday 1966, though, his family home burned down when a spark from a central heating wire sent the insulation up in flames. He can see how his life was shaped by this incident, making him a nomad who doesn’t accumulate possessions. Hoping to reclaim a sense of ancestral connection, he returned to the New Forest some 30 times between January 2019 and January 2020, observing the unfolding seasons and the many uncommon and endemic species its miles house. The Forest has more than 1000 trees of over 400 years old, mostly oak and beech. Much of the rest is rare heath habitat, and livestock grazing maintains open areas. There are some plants only found in the New Forest, as well as a (probably extinct) cicada. He comes face to face with butterflies, a muntjac, and lesser-seen birds like the Dartford warbler, firecrest, goshawk, honey buzzard, and nightjar. Yet this is no mere ‘white man goes for a walk’ travelogue, as so much of modern nature writing has been belittled. Ansell weaves many different themes into the book. More than 99% of the country is in the hands of a few, with hardly any left as common land. There is also enduring inequality of access to what little there is, often along race and class lines. Ansell speaks of “environmental dread” as a “rational response to the way the world is turning,” but he doesn’t rest in that mindset of despair. In favour of rewilding, the New Forest thus strikes him as an excellent model of both wildlife-friendly land management and freedom of human access. Ansell is among my most-admired British nature writers. Rebecca Foster
The Place of Tides by James Rebanks (2025)
Rebanks is known for being the author of the phenomenally successful farming books, The Shepherd’s Life and English Pastoral, and for extolling a simpler way of farming life, going back to older ways that preserve the land and its flora and fauna. Here we experience with him a foundational experience, when he’s able to spend a season with the “duck women” of the Norwegian islands on the edge of the Arctic. Seven years before the events told in this book, Rebanks visited a Norwegian island with its one remaining duck woman, who tended the eider who nested there, kept them safe from predators as far as she could and collected the feathers for eiderdowns. He felt a real connection with the woman and wasn’t able to get her out of his head and, it turned out, she remembered him, the only Englishman who had visited her. He was able to write and arrange to stay with her for her one last season before she retired – along with her best friend Ingrid, who is a little younger and more well – and to help with the various processes involved. He’s clumsy at first but gets to grips with the hard physical work, and also with the quiet pace of life in the small, simple house they live in, with books and pictures cherished and looked at over and over again, as well as the need to connect with the women and earn their trust. Of course there is some “nature red in tooth and claw” as we’re dealing with wild animals which live in harsh conditions and have predators, but it’s not too bad or vividly described for this sensitive reader. The three people’s relationship with the ducks is protective and mutual but not sentimentalised. Their lives are dictated by the work, the weather and the season, the sun staying in the sky for longer, meals taken more randomly. An immensely affecting and powerful read Liz Dexter
