In defence of John James Audubon
The text of this well illustrated book is mostly John James Audubon’s, from journals unpublished in his lifetime. Part I…
Will seagulls become as scary as Hitchcock’s The Birds?
Little Toller Books, in Dorset, aims to publish old and new writing on nature by the very best writers and…
The ordeal of being married (twice) to John Bellany
Misery memoirs are in vogue. There is much misery in this harrowing account of married life with John Bellany (1942–2013)…
If you keep a pet raven, look out for your jewellery and car keys
With bird books the more personal the better. Joe Shute was once a crime correspondent and is today a Telegraph…
Enraptured by raptors
The fewer birds there are, the more books about them, particularly of the literary kind. Helen MacDonald’s H is for…
To be astonished by nature, look no further than Claxton
Mark Cocker is the naturalist writer of the moment, with birds his special subject. His previous book, Birds and People,…
What's eating London's songbirds?
This book, with its absurdly uninformative photographs, dismal charts and smattering of charmless drawings, looks like a report. A pity,…
No special pleading needed for this disabled Dutch master
To discover an ‘unknown’ is the dream of anyone connected with the arts and in Johannes Thopas (c.1626-1688/95) we have…
How seriously should we take Ruskin as an artist?
This stout and well-designed volume nicely complements Tim Hilton’s classic biography of John Ruskin. It is the catalogue for the…
Toowit-towoo! At long last, a Collins book on owls
Owls have more associations for us than perhaps any other family of birds, suggested Jeremy Mynott in Birdscapes, so it…
Birds & People, by Mark Cocker - review
‘A world without birds would lay waste the human heart,’ writes Mark Cocker. Following his Birds Britannica and prize-winning Crow…
