With a title taken from the 1940 Batsford book, this is nature writing for the modern reader.
It is beautifully lyrical collection of essays on the natural world in Britain by the Guardian’s country diary writer Paul Evans. It is a book both for those that live in the country and those that don’t, but experience nature every day through brownfield edge lands, transport corridors, urban greenspace, industrialised agriculture, suburban expansion, rural development and fragments of ancient countryside. Evans weaves historical, cultural and literary references into his writing, ranging from TS Eliot to Bridget Riley, from Hieronymus Bosch to Napoleon.
The book is divided into the following chapters that help us to understand the wildlife that surround us:
The Weedling Wild - wildlife of the wasteland: ragwort, rosebay willowherb, giant hogweed, cinnabar moth, comma butterfly, thistle.
Gardens of Light - wildlife under moonlight: pipistrelle bats, lacewings, dor beetle, orb-weaver spider.
The Flow - tales from the riverbank, estuaries and seas: kingfisher, salmon, minnow, otter, heron.
Blight - the majesty of trees and the plights that affect them: ash, lime, oak, elm, azalea, maple.
The Commons - meadowland with a human footprint: lark, Adonis blue butterfly, horseshoe vetch, rabbit, cattle, skylark, black knapweed, woodcock, six-belted clearwing moth.
The Garden of Delights - the plants and creatures found just outside: hoverfly, ground elder, mining bee, song thrush, greenfly, jackdaw, peacock butterfly, hedgehog, jay.
The Greenwood - life beneath the forest canopy: crab apple, tawny owl, robin, lords-and-ladies, stinkhorn, stoat, polecat, buzzard, hawthorn, wren, chiffchaff, fallow deer, speckled wood butterfly, hazel.
The Returned - wildlife back from exile: raven, red kite, sea eagle, polecat, pine marten, large blue butterfly, great bustard, beaver, otter, wild boar.
Wild Moors - the creatures that live on the moors and the campaigns to save them: heather, hobby falcon, red grouse, hen harriers, bilberry, wild pony, golden plover, green tiger beetle, stonechat.
Bestiary - tales of British creatures, from A to Z.
