The amazing aerial acrobatics of swifts
Over the course of one midsummer’s day, Mark Cocker presents a startling picture of the breeding, feeding, fledging and migrating habits of these little dynamos of life
The Hope Diamond brought nothing but despair
Hettie Judah describes how its various owners were plagued by bankruptcy, divorce, suicide, madness – and savaging by wild dogs
It’s the fisherman who’s truly hooked
Trying to catch fish with rod and line is a pursuit that, for many, goes far beyond the pleasant passing…
The life cycle of the limpet teaches universal truths
Adam Nicolson is one of our finest writers of non-fiction. He has range — from place and history to literature…
Surrounded by sea and sky: the irresistible draw of islands
Holiday islands, desert islands, love islands, islands of eternal youth, siren islands, islands filled with screaming demons. Of all the…
Is it possible that Neanderthals had a spiritual life?
When I studied anthropology back in the early 1980s, Neanderthals were still largely the bulk-browed brutes of yore, grunting in…
Tree-ring analysis has solved many historical mysteries
History is only as good as its sources. It is limited largely to what has survived of written records, and…
Home was not where the heart was for the Enlightenment’s intellectuals
Emily Thomas is a distinguished academic philosopher who has ‘spent a lot of time by herself getting lost around the…
History is made from ideas — but are ideas becoming history?
Wallace Stevens called it ‘the necessary angel’. Ted Hughes thought it ‘the most essential bit of machinery we have if…
![An English oak in a misty meadow at dawn [Getty]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/oak_tree.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Why the British love the oak tree
Over the past couple of years, I’ve been planting up much of the pasture on our small Cornish farm with…
It’s not a wave’s crest, but its translucent interior that surfers dream of
Surfing has come of age. Like rock and roll, it was once strictly for young people, edgy and alternative and…
Creature comforts
As naturalist, educator and writer, John Lister-Kaye was for many years a voice in the wilderness. In 1976, when nature…
The current scarcity of herring may itself be a red herring
Fish stories come in two varieties: the micro-version of a hundred riverside bars, blokeish boastings of rod-and-line tussles with individual…
What can we do with Dartmoor?
In his poem ‘Eden Rock’, Charles Causley conjures up a dreamy memory of a childhood picnic ‘somewhere beyond Eden Rock’.…
First ash dieback, then the world's scariest beetle
The ash tree may lack the solidity of oak, the magnificence of beech or the ancient mystique of yew. In…
What seamen fear more than Somali pirates
If a time traveller were to arrive in our world from, say, 1514 — a neat half-millennium away — what…
