Who'd sleep with a giant centipede? Bel Mooney gives her recommendations for books about nature
A WILD LIFE by Martin Hughes-Games
A WILD LIFE
by Martin Hughes-Games
(Corsair £18.99 % £15.19)
I love the BBC’s Spring and Autumnwatch programmes for their beguiling mix of knowledge, passion and high spirits.
My favourite presenter is the fearless Hughes-Games, who relishes standing in a cold, wet dawn to enthuse us about a bird or beast we never thought we cared about before. Yet he has a wealth of experience on the other side of the camera, too — for more than 30 years, he’s been a producer-director of wildlife programmes, working on location, often in really dangerous and uncomfortable circumstances.
Would you go to bed with the fiendishly dangerous giant centipede? How do you re-create a croc attack? How do you time the fastest bird on Earth? His stories are always riveting, often hilarious, and told with enthralling expertise.
THE MOTH SNOWSTORM by Michael McCarthy
THE MOTH SNOWSTORM
by Michael McCarthy
(John Murray £20)
This is unquestionably my nature book of the year — an intensely moving and intelligent plea for ‘Joy’ to be counted the most powerful reason for valuing the natural world.
McCarthy’s starting point is the vivid recollection of a veritable snowstorm of moths in car headlights when he was young.
With glorious originality, he makes an unanswerable case for us to start proclaiming ‘a new kind of love’ from the rooftops. Can you attach a cost-benefit analysis to what a walk in fields listening to birdsong can do for the human spirit? No.
That’s why everybody should read this angry, beautiful and passionate book.
CUCKOO by Nick Davies
CUCKOO
by Nick Davies
(Bloomsbury £16.99 % £12.74)
This gripping detective story of the natural world sets out to discover how it is that the cuckoo gets away with its crimes.
It’s astonishing to think that, 2,300 years ago, Aristotle recorded: ‘it lays its eggs in the nest of smaller birds after devouring these birds’ eggs’ and that these bad bird-parents ‘do not sit, nor hatch, nor bring up their young’. Centuries of cuckoo observation later, Davies must surely have produced the ultimate book on this cunning creature. How does the species lay eggs that actually match those in host nests?
Why does a tiny bird like a reed warbler go on feeding the giant cuckoo chick that has murdered its own young? The answers are amazing — in a book that ranges effortlessly from literature to evolution.
THE COMPANY OF TREES by Thomas Pakenham
THE COMPANY OF TREES
by Thomas Pakenham
(Weidenfeld £30 % £22.50)
I cannot imagine anyone who wouldn’t love this handsome volume as a present.
Beautifully illustrated, it combines travel and trees with a wonderfully entertaining memoir of life on an ancient Irish estate, where veteran tree expert Pakenham has created a magnificent arboretum. This perpetual enthusiast (now 82) takes us through his diary of one year, in which he travels to (among other places) Tibet, India and Patagonia, and collects seeds from South-West China to plant in his Chinese garden in Ireland.
He also shares his love of trees and the natural world with an army of beloved grandchildren, sure that they will be as ‘crazy about trees’ as he is. An enchanting and inspirational book.
THE CABARET OF PLANTS by Richard Mabey
THE CABARET OF PLANTS
by Richard Mabey
(Profile £20)
Since a cabaret is an entertaining floorshow, Mabey has chosen his latest title with the flair we’ve come to expect from this brilliant nature writer.
For on our beautiful planet is a cavalcade of magical, ingenious, amusing and exciting creatures: I mean, of course, the world of plants. Like all the best nature books, this invokes personal experience, history, science and poetry as well as botany, in order to challenge us afresh to see plants as life-saving, as well as inspiring. A beautifully produced must-read.
