Book review – natural history
Fluttering to extinction: the tragedy of Britain’s butterflies
In 1979, despite the best efforts of scientists for more than a century, a butterfly called the British Large Blue…
![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…
Will all whales soon be extinct?
Nick Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, is quick to tell us he’s not…
The most bizarre museum heist ever
They don’t look like a natural pair. First there’s the author, Kirk Wallace Johnson, a hero of America’s war in…
Animals make us human
There was a time when biologists so scorned the attribution of human qualities to other animals that anthropomorphism was seen…
Reading the waves
Water accounts for 70 per cent of your planet, and 60 per cent of your body. Yet when do you…
Inside of a dog
Before I read this book, I thought I knew what a dog was. It barks, it wags its tail, it…
Not so bird-brained after all
What is it about birds? They are the wild creatures we see most often, their doings and calls a daily…
Tracking the super cats
Of all charismatic animals, tigers are surely the most filmed, televised, documented, noisily cherished and, paradoxically, the most persecuted on…
Green is the colour of happiness
According to this wonderfully thought-provoking book, human attachment to plants was much more evident in the 19th century than it…
Tree devotion
I have never written much about the one-acre shaw of native trees I planted in 1994, even though it is…
Following the fickle fish
Fish stories come in two varieties: the micro-version of a hundred riverside bars, blokeish boastings of rod-and-line tussles with individual…
The soul takes flight
Last month, at Edinburgh School of Art, I was interested to come across a student who’d chosen Marlowe’s Dr Faustus…
Calm after the storm
I hesitate ever to criticise an author for the inappropriateness of a book’s title, since it’s more likely the fault…
For blackberry, read BlackBerry
It is not only archaic or dialect terms in natural history we’re now missing in everyday speech, says Adam Nicolson. Soon children won’t even know what a dandelion is
The lion lies down with the worm
‘The meaning of life’, announces Simon Barnes in the opening pages of his new book, ‘is life, and the purpose…
Ashes to ashes
The ash tree may lack the solidity of oak, the magnificence of beech or the ancient mystique of yew. In…
Is there honey still for tea?
The importance of biodiversity, a handy concept that embraces diversity of eco-systems, species, genes and molecules, has been promoted for…
A murder of crows
This book, with its absurdly uninformative photographs, dismal charts and smattering of charmless drawings, looks like a report. A pity,…
Soothing the savage breast
Is it the feathers that do the trick? The severely truculent expressions on their faces? Or is it their ancient…
Blood at the root
John Evelyn (1620–1706) was not only a diarist. He was one of the most learned men of his time: traveller,…
Cats in feathers
Owls have more associations for us than perhaps any other family of birds, suggested Jeremy Mynott in Birdscapes, so it…
A choice of gardening books
I’ll own up at once. Tim Richardson and Andrew Lawson, the author and photographer of The New English Garden (Frances…
Epic journeys
Consider for a moment the plight of the willow warbler. Russian birds of this species fly between eastern Siberia and…
