The Jay, The Beech and the Limpetshell

Weren't they richer, rock pools, wasn't the seashore busier, when I was a kid? Richard Smyth had always been drawn to the natural world, but when he became a father he found a new joy and a new urgency in showing his kids the everyday wild things around them. As he and his children explore rockpools in Whitley Bay, or the woods and moors near his Yorkshire home, he imagines the world they might inhabit as they grow up. Through different objects discovered on their wanderings ? a beech leaf, a jay feather, a limpetshell ? Smyth examines his own past as well as that of the early natural historians, weaving together history, memoir, and environmentalism to form a new kind of nature writing: one that asks both what we have lost, and what we have yet to find. AUTHOR: Richard Smyth is a writer and critic. He is author of six books of non-fiction, including A Sweet Wild Note and An Indifference of Birds, and the novel The Woodcock. His short stories have also been widely published and broadcast on BBC Radio 4.