About John Gibbons: John Gibbons is an environmental journalist and commentator who has been speaking about climate change in Ireland for over a decade. The Lie of the Land is his first book.

John Gibbons

Dave Gibbons

About Stella Gibbons: Stella Gibbons was born in London in 1902. She went to the North London Collegiate School and studied journalism at University College, London. She then worked for ten years on various papers, including the Evening Standard. Stella Gibbons is the author of twenty-five novels, three volumes of short stories, and four volumes of poetry. Her first novel Cold Comfort Farm (1932) was an immediate success and won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize for 1933. Among her works are Nightingale Wood (1938), The Bachelor (1944), Westwood (1946), and Starlight (1967). She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1950. Stella Gibbons died in 1989.

Stella Gibbons

Edward Gibbon

Lewis Grassic Gibbon

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Brett Westwood

Award-winning wildlife presenter Brett Westwood explores our relationship with mammals, and their impact on human culture and society 
 
For as long as humans have existed, animals have got under our skin, enthralling us with their wildness, enriching our lives and influencing art, literature, science and religion. And we feel perhaps the deepest connection with mammals, as we too are members of this same vast group. In these engrossing episodes from Radio 4's landmark series, Natural Histories, Brett Westwood tells the stories of 10 of the most mesmerising mammals, illuminating the often surprising ways they have shaped society. 
 
Looking at our closest relatives, monkeys and apes, he discovers how they reflect our humanity, and how, from King Kong to the PG Tips chimps, we have exploited them for entertainment. Meeting an enthusiastic lurcher named Trevor, Brett finds out how dogs have changed us and vice versa, as he unpacks our close companionship with man's best friend. Drawing on tales of Dracula and Batman, he investigates our obsession with bats, and, in company with Verity Sharp, he gets up close to one of the weirdest, most endangered primates on Earth: the aye-aye. Plus, Brett experiences the magic of sloths with Joanna Pinnock; examines what a furry stuffed toy can teach us about our association with bears; and analyses how our perception of the enigmatic whale has undergone a transformation, from feared beast to icon of conservation. 
 
Packed with fascinating facts about the biology and cultural history of each animal, this carefully curated collection celebrates the wonder and infinite variety of mammals, and shows how our past, present and future are inextricably intertwined with theirs. 
 
Production credits 
Presented by Brett Westwood with Joanna Pinnock (Sloth) and Verity Sharp (Aye-Aye) 
Produced in partnership with the Natural History Museum, London 
Producers: Tom Bonnett, Melvin Rickarby, Sarah Blunt, Beth O'Dea 
Series producer: Mary Colwell 
Additional sound recordings of Narwhals courtesy of Dr Susanna Blackwell, Greeneridge Sciences Inc. 
 
Episode guide 
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on the following dates: 
Monkeys And Apes 2 June 2015 
Bears 8 September 2015 
Whales 17 November 2015 
Elephant 27 September 2016 
Bat 1 August 2017 
Giraffe 7 November 2017 
Reindeer 21 November 2017 
Dog 4 September 2018 
Sloth 18 October 2019 
Aye-Aye 29 November 2019 
 
© 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd.

Natural Histories: Mammals

A BBC Radio 4 nature collection

Gerald Durrell

'In the gloom it came along the branches towards me, its round, hypnotic eyes blazing, its spoon-like ears turning to and fro independently like radar dishes . . . it was Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky come to life . . . one of the most incredible creatures I had ever been privileged to meet.' 
 
The fourth largest island in the world, Madagascar is home to woodlice the size of golf balls, moths the size of Regency fans and the Aye-Aye, a type of lemur held by local superstion to be an omen of death. But when Gerald Durrell visited the island, the destruction of the forests meant that the Aye-Aye and many other creatures were in danger of extinction. 
Told with his unique sense of humour and inimitable charm, Gerald Durrell's The Aye Aye and I is the final adventure from one of Britain's best loved conservationists.

The Aye-Aye and I

Ami Vitale

Panda Love&#160;is a collection of incredible images of these gentle giants. 
 
 Ami Vitale&#39;s stunning photographs, taken&#160;on location in China, document the efforts to breed pandas and release them back into the wild. Ami was given unprecedented access to the pandas and her photos give an amazing insight into the bears&#39; lives in both the sanctuaries and their natural habitat. 
 
 Fluffy panda cubs tumble out of baskets and play hide-and-seek with their carers, while the adult pandas curiously explore the forest and&#160;climb&#160;trees.&#160;The giant panda is everyone&#39;s favourite&#160;bamboo-munching bear.&#160; 
 
 China is on course to save its most famous ambassador, and Panda Love&#160;lovingly documents the process of putting the wild back into an icon.

Panda Love

The Secret Lives of Pandas

Carlos Magdalena

Carlos Magdalena of Kew Gardens is not your average botanical horticulturist. He's a man on a mission to save the world's most endangered plants from destruction and thieves hunting for wealthy collectors. He is a plant messiah. 
 
From the planet's tiniest waterlily - the Nymphaea thermarum - to Huarango trees with roots over 50 metres long, Carlos has a miraculous ability to bring breathtakingly beautiful plants back from the brink of extinction. He has travelled to the most remote and dangerous parts of the world - from the mountains of Peru to isolated Indian Ocean islands to the deepest Australian outback - in search of the rarest exotic species. Then, back in the Tropical Nursery at Kew, he uses pioneering, left-field techniques to help them grow. 
 
Now he's here to spread the gospel. The Plant Messiah is the inspirational story of a man who has devoted - and risked - his life to save incredible species, all in the name of making this Earth a greener and happier place. Amen to that.

The Plant Messiah

Adventures in Search of the World’s Rarest Species

'When you have a large collection of animals to transport from one end of the world to the other you cannot, as a lot of people seem to think, just hoist them aboard the nearest ship and set off with a gay wave of your hand.' 
 
Gerald Durrell and his wife are the proud owners of a small zoo on the island of Jersey. But there's one thing that's better than a small zoo - a bigger one! So Durrell heads off to South America to collect more animals. 
 
Along windswept Patagonian shores and in Argentine tropical forests, he encounters a range of animals from penguins to elephant seals. But as always, he is drawn to those rare and interesting creatures which he hopes will thrive and breed in captivity . . . 
 
Told with enthusiasm and without sentimentality, Gerald Durrell's The Whispering Land is an often hilarious but always inspiring foray into the South American wilds.

The Whispering Land

BBC Radio

Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine travel the world in pursuit of species on the brink of extinction 
 
In 1985, The Observer magazine sent Douglas Adams to Madagascar to look for the exotic and potentially extinct aye-aye lemur. There he met zoologist Mark Carwardine, and together they made a radio pilot about their travels, In Search of the Aye-Aye. This led to a hugely popular radio series, Last Chance to See, later adapted as a bestselling book. Douglas Adams died in 2001, but his friend Stephen Fry took his place for a follow-up 20th anniversary television series, broadcast on BBC Two in 2009. 
 
This collection includes the initial pilot show and the complete BBC radio series from 1989, in which Adams and Carwardine embark on a quest to track down weird and wonderful threatened species across the globe. Voyaging from New Zealand to Chile, they hope to encounter the flightless Kakapo parrot, the river dolphin revered as the ‘goddess of the Yangtze’ and the secretive, confusing manatee – as well as the randy Rodrigues fruit bat, the terrifying (and smelly) Komodo dragon and the solitary Juan Fernandez fur seal. 
 
Funny, thought-provoking and poignant, Last Chance to See combines Adams’ inimitable humour and Carwardine’s expertise to provide a unique snapshot of our vanishing world and the rare creatures that inhabit it. 
 
Sadly the Kakapo remains critically endangered, and Yangtze River dolphin was declared functionally extinct in 2006. Part travelogue, part natural history show, this unforgettable account of a remarkable voyage of discovery serves as a reminder to protect our planet while we still can. 
 
Track listing: 
1 In Search of the Aye-Aye 
2 Ralph, The Fragrant Parrot of Codfish Island (the kakapo) 
3 Gone Fishing! (the Yangtze River dolphin) 
4 Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? (the Amazonian manatee) 
5 The Answer is Blowing in the Wind (the Rodrigues fruit bat) 
6 A Man-Eating, Evil-Smelling Dragon (the Komodo dragon) 
7 The Sultan of Juan Fernandez (the Juan Fernandez fur seal) 
 
Presented by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine 
 
Natural Selection: In Search of the Aye-Aye 
Produced by Tim Grout Smith 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 1 November 1985 
 
Last Chance to See 
Narrated by Peter Jones 
Produced by Chris Muir 
Series producer: Gaynor Shutte 
Additional music by Steven Faux 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 4 October 1989-8 November 1989

Last Chance to See: The original BBC Radio series

In search of the world's most endangered species

Jay Griffiths

'I took seven years over this work, spent all I had, my time, money and energy. Part of the journey was a green riot and part a deathly bleakness. I got ill, I got well. I went to the freedom fighters of West Papua and sang my head off in their highlands. I met cannibals infinitely kinder and more trustworthy than the murderous missionaries who evangelize them. I anchored a boat to an iceberg where polar bears slept; ate witchetty grubs and visited sea gypsies. I found a paradox of wildness in the glinting softness of its charisma, for what is savage is in the deepest sense gentle and what is wild is kind. In the end - a strangely sweet result - I came back to a wild home' 
 
Wild describes an extraordinary odyssey, courageous and sometimes dangerous, to wildernesses of earth and ice, water and fire. It is by turns funny, touching and harrowing, and offers a poetic consideration of the tender connection between human society and wild lands. Wild won the inaugural Orion Book Award for 2007 and was shortlisted for the Orwell prize and for the World Book Day award.

Wild

An Elemental Journey

John Vaillant

THE AWARD-WINNING INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER, FROM THE AUTHOR OF FIRE WEATHER, WINNER OF THE 2023 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NONFICTION 
WINNER OF A WINDHAM-CAMPBELL PRIZE 2014 
 
'Absolutely spellbinding' New York Times 
'Will change how many people think about nature' Sebastian Junger 
______________________________________ 
 
JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF NORTH AMERICA'S LAST GREAT FOREST. 
 
On a bleak winter night in 1997, a British Columbia timber scout named Grant Hadwin committed an act of shocking violence: he destroyed the legendary Golden Spruce of the Queen Charlotte Islands. With its rich colours, towering height and luminous needles, the tree was a scientific marvel, beloved by the local Haida people who believed it sacred. 
 
The Golden Spruce tells the story of the sadness which pushed Hadwin to such a desperate act of destruction - a bizarre environmental protest which acts as a metaphor for the challenge the world faces today. But it also raises the question of what then happened to Hadwin, who disappeared under suspicious circumstances and remains missing to this day. 
 
Part thrilling mystery, part haunting depiction of the ancient beauty of the coastal wilderness, and part dramatic chronicle of the historical collision of Europeans and the native Haida, The Golden Spruce is a timely portrait of man's troubled relationship with a vanishing world. 
_______________________ 
 
'Worthy of comparison to Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild . . . A story of the heartbreakingly complex relationship between man and nature.' ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY 
 
'His story is about one man and one tree, but it is much more than that. John Vaillant has written a work that will change how many people think about nature.' SEBASTIAN JUNGER 
 
'A haunting tale of a good man driven mad by environmental devastation' LOS ANGELES TIMES 
 
'Absolutely spellbinding . . . descriptions of the Queen Charlotte Islands, with their misty, murky light and hushed, cathedral-like forests, are haunting, and Vaillant does full justice to the noble, towering trees.' NEW YORK TIMES 
 
'A haunting portrait of man's vexed relationship with nature.' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

The Golden Spruce

The award-winning international bestseller

Patrick Roberts

Jungle is a new and ambitious history of the world, telling the remarkable story of the world's tropical forests from the arrival of the first plants millions of years ago to the role of tropical forests in the evolution of the world's atmosphere, the dinosaurs, the first mammals and even our own species and ancestors. Highlighting provocative new evidence garnered from cutting-edge research, Dr Roberts shows, for example, that our view of humans as 'savannah specialists' is wildly wrong, and that the 'Anthropocene' began not with the Industrial Revolution, but potentially as early as 6,000 years ago in the tropics. We see that the relationship between humankind and 'jungles' is deep-rooted, that we are all connected to their destruction, and that we must all act to save them. Urgent, clear-sighted and original, Jungle challenges the way we think about the world - and ourselves.

Jungle

How Tropical Forests Shaped World History

How Tropical Forests Shaped World History – and Us

Suzanne Simard

Raised in the hardy forest communities of British Columbia, scientist Suzanne Simard overturned conventional beliefs in proving that trees and plants are connected underground by an immense web of fungal mycelia, at the centre of which lie the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful entities that sustain the forest. 
 
Finding the Mother Tree is the story of a lifetime spent uncovering startling truths about trees: their perceptions, behaviours, healing capacities, language, memory and wisdom. Simard's landmark work has been immensely influential, revealing the complex cycle of forest life - on which we rely for our existence - and offering profound lessons about resilience and kinship.

Finding the Mother Tree

Uncovering the Wisdom and Intelligence of the Forest

Douglas Adams

Mark Carwardine

‘Descriptive writing of a high order… this is an extremely intelligent book’ The Times 
 
Join Douglas Adams, bestselling and beloved author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and zoologist Mark Carwardine on an adventure in search of the world’s most endangered and exotic creatures. 
 
In this book, Adams’ self-proclaimed favourite of his own works, the pair encounter animals in imminent peril: the giant Komodo dragon of Indonesia, the lovable kakapo of New Zealand, the blind river dolphins of China, the white rhinos of Zaire, the rare birds of Mauritius island in the Indian Ocean and the alien-like aye-aye of Madagascar. Inimitably witty and poignant, Last Chance to See is both a celebration of our most extraordinary creatures and a warning about what we have to lose if we do not act soon. 
 
Featuring a fantastic new foreword by the authors' long-time friend Stephen Fry, and an afterword from Mark Carwardine that considers what has changed since the book was first published, Last Chance to See feels more urgent than ever before. 
 
‘Douglas Adams’ genius was in using comedy to make serious points about the world’ Independent

Last Chance To See

A classic Gerald Durrell title reissued by Penguin to celebrate the centenary of his birth 
 
'Gerald Durrell was magic' SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH 
 
Menagerie Manor chronicles the early, sunlit days of Gerald Durrell’s dream to create a sanctuary for animals, realized Les Augrès Manor in Trinity, Jersey. Here we encounter Leo the lion, who enjoys roaring solidly through the night; N’Pongo the gorilla who thinks nothing of boarding a small plane to be part of a BBC documentary; and Claudius the South American tapir, an escape art of Houdini-like cunning. 
 
Republished to celebrate the centenary of Durrell’s birth, this book is a testament to the enduring importance of conservation in a changing world, and the profound connection between the human and animal kingdoms. 
 
'This book is a certain joy' NEW STATESMAN 
 
'Animals come close to being Durrell's best friends. . . . He writes about them with style, verve, and humour' TIME

Menagerie Manor

Jake Fiennes

'Jake Fiennes is changing the face of farming in Britain... a revolutionising force' Isabella Tree 
 
Our relationship with our land is broken: we must heal it. 
 
Jake Fiennes is on a mission to change the face of the English countryside. As Conservation Manager at Holkham in Norfolk, one of the country's largest historic country estates, his radical habitat restoration and agricultural work has nurtured its species and risen its crop yields - bringing back wetlands, hedgerows, birds and butterflies over 25,000 acres of land. 
 
But this isn't rewilding - there is no 'wild' in Britain anymore. Mass farming, crop science and industrial chemicals have destroyed the majority of our natural landscape and wildlife over the last century. Land Healer is the story of Fiennes's ambition to bring back our flora and fauna - by reclaiming our traditions and trialling new experiments which could restore our symbiosis with our land, and save our shared future. 
 
Following the farming year and the natural cycle of the seasons, Land Healer chronicles a life of conservation lived at the edges, and is a manifesto for rethinking our relationship with the natural world before it's too late.

Land Healer

How Farming Can Save Britain’s Countryside

Paul Wood

The Rebel Tree. The Climber’s Lime. The Ecclesiastical Pear. 
 
In Tree Hunting, Paul Wood seeks out the best individual trees – the most charismatic, quirky or downright spectacular – that grow in Britain and Ireland's towns, cities and villages (and, in one case, from the crack in a church steeple). From a stumpy sycamore in Shetland, contorted by wind and hard weather, to the shining jewel in Brighton’s unlikely treasure trove of elms, Paul travels on a quest from north to south rooting out the legends and tall tales behind these marvellous specimens. As he delves into this rich ecosystem, he reveals how trees are inextricably bound to the story of our towns and cities: they have always meant a great deal to those that live near them, and they continue to shape the fabric of urban life in deep, and often surprising ways. 
 
Including sumptuous maps, grid references and charming travel notes so you can plan adventures of your own, Tree Hunting will help you unlock the secrets of Britain and Ireland's urban forests.

Tree Hunting

1,000 Trees to Find in Britain and Ireland’s Towns and Cities

Will Millard

Accompanying the landmark BBC natural history documentary, narrated by Sir David Attenborough. 
 
Every family has its pride.Kingdom chronicles the real-life saga of four powerful animal families set in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley, a land experiencing seismic change. And these aren’t just any families.The valley is home to the fastest growing lion population in the world, the densest number of leopards in Africa, the largest population of wild dogs, and the first hyenas to receive an in-depth collared study. Leopard mother Olimba is on a mission to raise her cubs to adulthood; alpha female of the wild dog pack Storm is fiercely determined to lead her pack to new plains; hyena sisters Toto and Tandala vie to become clan queen; lion brothers evade hunters and lead their pride in the valley. 
 
As their world shrinks around them, the families are pushed closer together until they come head-to-head in a battle against each other for the land.Featuring stunning full-colour photography, Kingdom charts the tumultuous existence of these real animal characters as they compete to exist in the increasingly threatened Luangwa Valley.

Kingdom

Every family has its pride

Anthony Bourke

John Rendall

In 2008, a YouTube clip became an internet phenomenon. It showed the emotional reunion of two young men and their pet lion, Christian, after they had left him in Africa to be introduced into his rightful home in the wild. 
 
Anthony 'Ace' Bourke and John Rendall visited London from Australia in 1969 and bought a boisterous lion cub in Harrods. But Christian soon grew from cuddly cub to King of the Kings Road in London, and the only way to avoid him being incarcerated in a zoo was to place him under the expert care of George Adamson in Kenya. Ace and John did not return to see their lion for a year. 
 
A Lion Called Christian tells their touching story, accompanied by stunning photographs. It's a unique and extraordinary tale of its time that resonates again today with a worldwide audience, thanks to the internet age, and is destined to become one of the great classics of animal literature.

A Lion Called Christian

Kieran Mulvaney

The polar bear is one of the most recognisable animals on the planet. Yet if global warming continues at its present pace, summer sea ice could disappear entirely from the Arctic Ocean by the year 2040. Polar bears could be extinct within a generation. 
 
Ice Bear is the definitive account of an iconic species: its life, its past, and its uncertain future. These beautiful bears are creatures of paradox: Arctic residents whose major problem is not staying warm, but keeping cool. Officially classed as marine mammals, they are the world's largest land carnivores. They begin life in a snowdrift; at birth they weigh just twenty ounces. Fully grown, they become massive predators that can walk almost silently, ten feet in length and close to 2,000 pounds. Wandering thousands of miles over the course of a year, they are, above all, creatures of the ice. Without sea ice and the life it supports, polar bears cannot survive. 
 
Kieran Mulvaney is an expert on the Polar regions who has led three expeditions to the Arctic as well as Project Thin Ice 2006: Save the Polar Bear - the successful first attempt to reach the North Pole in summer and draw attention to the impact of climate change on polar bears. This book blends natural and human history, myth and reality with scientific and personal observation, to tell the story of these remarkable animals, the region in which they dwell, and the rapid changes overtaking planet Earth.

Ice Bear

A Natural and Unnatural History of the Polar Bear

Lucy Jones

'Beautifully written, movingly told and meticulously researched ... a convincing plea for a wilder, richer world' -- Isabella Tree, author of Wilding 
 
Today many of us live indoor lives, disconnected from the natural world as never before. And yet nature remains deeply ingrained in our language, culture and consciousness. For centuries, we have acted on an intuitive sense that we need communion with the wild to feel well. Now, in the moment of our great migration away from the rest of nature, more and more scientific evidence is emerging to confirm its place at the heart of our psychological wellbeing. So what happens, asks acclaimed journalist Lucy Jones, as we lose our bond with the natural world--might we also be losing part of ourselves? 
 
Delicately observed and rigorously researched, Losing Eden is an enthralling journey through this new research, exploring how and why connecting with the living world can so drastically affect our health. Travelling from forest schools in East London, to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, via Poland's primeval woodlands, Californian laboratories and ecotherapists' couches, Jones takes us to the cutting edge of human biology, neuroscience and psychology, and discovers new ways of understanding our increasingly dysfunctional relationship with the earth. Urgent and uplifting, Losing Eden is a rallying cry for a wilder way of life - for finding asylum in the soil and joy in the trees - which might just help us to save the living planet, as well as ourselves, from a future of ecological grief.

Losing Eden

Why Our Minds Need the Wild

Ben Rawlence

A ground-breaking and beautifully written investigation into the Arctic Treeline with an urgent environmental message. 
 
'Evocative, wise and unflinching' Jay Griffiths, author of Wild 
 
The Arctic treeline is the frontline of climate change, where the trees have been creeping towards the pole for fifty years already. 
 
Scientists are only just beginning to understand the astonishing significance of these northern forests for all life on Earth. At the treeline, Rawlence witnesses the accelerating impact of climate change and the devastating legacies of colonialism and capitalism. But he also finds reasons for hope. Humans are creatures of the forest; we have always evolved with trees and The Treeline asks us where our co-evolution might take us next. 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES CROPPER WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 
 
'A moving, thoughtful, deeply reported elegy for our vanishing world and a map of the one to come' Nathaniel Rich, author of Losing Earth 
 
'A lyrical and passionate book... The Treeline is a sobering, powerful account of how trees might just save the world, as long as we are sensible enough to let them' Mail on Sunday 
 
'Ben Rawlence circumnavigates the very top of the globe - returning with a warning, in this enthralling and wonderfully written book' Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees

The Treeline

The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth

Colin Tudge

'Everyone interested in the natural world will enjoy The Secret Life of Trees. I found myself reading out whole chunks to friends' The Times, Books of the Year 
 
What is a tree? As this celebration of the trees shows, they are our countryside; our ancestors descended from them; they gave us air to breathe. Yet while the stories of trees are as plentiful as leaves in a forest, they are rarely told. 
 
Here, Colin Tudge travels from his own back garden round the world to explore the beauty, variety and ingenuity of trees everywhere: from how they live so long to how they talk to each other and why they came to exist in the first place. Lyrical and evocative, this book will make everyone fall in love with the trees around them.

The Secret Life of Trees

How They Live and Why They Matter

John Lewis-Stempel

AS FEATURED ON 'BBC RADIO 4 'GOOD READS'. 
Woodlands Awards 2019: Woodland Books of the Year 
 
'The oak is the wooden tie between heaven and earth. It is the lynch pin of the British landscape.' 
 
The oak is our most beloved and most common tree. It has roots that stretch back to all the old European cultures but Britain has more ancient oaks than all the other European countries put together. More than half the ancient oaks in the world are in Britain. 
 
Many of our ancestors - the Angles, the Saxons, the Norse - came to the British Isles in longships made of oak. For centuries the oak touched every part of a Briton's life - from cradle to coffin It was oak that made the 'wooden walls' of Nelson's navy, and the navy that allowed Britain to rule the world. Even in the digital Apple age, the real oak has resonance - the word speaks of fortitude, antiquity, pastoralism. 
 
The Glorious Life of the Oak explores our long relationship with this iconic tree; it considers the life-cycle of the oak, the flora and fauna that depend on the oak, the oak as medicine, food and drink, where Britain's mightiest oaks can be found, and it tells of oak stories from folklore, myth and legend.

The Glorious Life of the Oak

Tom Moorhouse

A DAILY MAIL BOOK OF THE WEEK: 'particularly enjoyable' 
'Somehow laugh-out-loud funny - passionate, warm and full of fascinating insights into the eccentric world of the field naturalist.' - Isabella Tree, author of Wilding 
 
Water voles are small, brownish, bewhiskered and charming. Made famous by 'Ratty' in The Wind in the Willows, once they were a ubiquitous part of our waterways. They were a totem of our rivers. Now, however, they are nearly gone. This is their story, and the story of a conservationist with a wild hope: that he could bring them back. 
 
Tom Moorhouse spent eleven years beside rivers, fens, canals, lakes and streams, researching British wildlife. Quite a lot of it tried to bite him. He studied four main species - two native and endangered, two invasive and endangering - beginning with water voles. He wanted to solve their conservation problems. He wanted to put things right. 
 
This book is about whether it worked, and what he learnt - and about what those lessons mean, not just for water voles but for all the world's wildlife. It is a book for anyone who has watched ripples spread on lazy waters, and wondered what moves beneath. Or who has waited in quiet hope for a rustle in the reeds, the munch of a stem, or the patter of unseen paws. 
 
Praise for Tom Moorhouse: 
 
'The pages of this book are shot through with quicksilver light reflected from wet fur - not a lament for our rivers but a chorus of hope for their future.' - Raynor Winn, author of The Salt Path 
 
'Beautiful and important. Tom's book is extraordinary in its gentle curiosity and sympathy for his subjects. I love this book.' - Sir Tim Smit KBE, Executive Vice-Chairman and Co-founder of the Eden Project 
 
'Terrific. Lightly but beautifully written. Very moving. Water voles are adorable little beasts. They are also tough, randy and stroppy, as Tom Moorhouse makes clear in this wry, amusing account of the often bloody, painful and frustrating business of conservation fieldwork. 'I hold stubbornly to optimism,' he declares, and his Elegy for a River demands that we do the same.' - Christopher Somerville, walking correspondent for The Times and author of The January Man

Elegy For a River

Whiskers, Claws and Conservation’s Last, Wild Hope

'For many years I had wanted to start a zoo . . . any reasonable person smitten with an ambition of this sort would have secured the zoo first and obtained the animals afterwards. but throughout my life I have rarely if ever achieved what I wanted by tackling it in a logical fashion.' 
 
A Zoo in My Luggage is Gerald Durrell's account of his attempt to set up his own zoo, after years spent gathering animals for other zoos. Journeying to Cameroon, he and his wife collected numerous mammals, birds and reptiles, including Cholmondely the chimpanzee and Bug-eye the bush-baby. 
 
But their problems really began when they attempted to return with their exotic menagerie. Not only had they to get them safely home to Britain but they also had to find somewhere able and - most of all - willing to house them. 
 
Told with wit and a zest for all things furry and feathered, Gerald Durrell's A Zoo in My Luggage is a brilliant account of how a pioneer of wildlife preservation came to found a new type of zoo.

A Zoo in My Luggage

Chris Thorogood

As a child, Chris Thorogood dreamed of seeing Rafflesia - the plant with the world's largest flowers. He crafted life-size replicas in an abandoned cemetery, carefully bringing them to life with paper and paint. Today he is a botanist at the University of Oxford's Botanic Garden and has dedicated his life to studying the biology of such extraordinary plants, working alongside botanists and foresters in Southeast Asia to document these huge, mysterious blooms. 
 
Pathless Forest is the story of his journey to study and protect this remarkable plant - a biological enigma, still little understood, which invades vines as a leafless parasite and steals its food from them. We join him on a mind-bending adventure, as he faces a seemingly impenetrable barrier of weird, wonderful and sometimes fearsome flora; finds himself smacking off leeches, hanging off vines, wading through rivers; and following indigenous tribes into remote, untrodden rainforests in search of Rafflesia's ghostly, foul-smelling blooms, more than a metre across. 
 
We depend on plants for our very existence, but two in five of the world's species are threatened with extinction - nobody knows how many species of Rafflesia might already have disappeared through deforestation. Pathless Forest is part thrilling adventure story and part an inspirational call to action to safeguard a fast-disappearing wilderness. To view plants in a different way, as vital for our own future as for that of the planet we share. And to see if Rafflesia itself can be saved.

Pathless Forest

The Quest to Save the World’s Largest Flowers

Robin Wall Kimmerer

John Burgoyne

'This book will nourish your soul, heart, and mind' Anthony Doerr 
 
As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? 
 
Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.” 
 
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE AUTUMN BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, GUARDIAN, TIME, OPRAH DAILY, LIT HUB, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, BOOKPAGE

The Serviceberry

An Economy of Gifts and Abundance

Dave Goulson

**SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** 
 
'Exquisite...should be read by every gardener in the country' Observer 
 
The Garden Jungle is a wonderful introduction to the hundreds of small creatures with whom we live cheek-by-jowl and of the myriad ways that we can encourage them to thrive. 
 
The Garden Jungle is about the wildlife that lives right under our noses, in our gardens and parks, between the gaps in the pavement, and in the soil beneath our feet. Dave Goulson gives us an insight into the fascinating and sometimes weird lives of these creatures, taking us burrowing into the compost heap, digging under the lawn and diving into the garden pond. He explains how our lives and ultimately the fate of humankind are inextricably intertwined with that of earwigs, bees, lacewings and hoverflies, unappreciated heroes of the natural world. 
 
For anyone who has a garden, or cares about our planet, this book is essential reading.

The Garden Jungle

or Gardening to Save the Planet

An anthology of programmes hosted by and about Roger Deakin, the legendary naturalist, introduced by 
 his friend Robert Macfarlane. 
 
Author, filmmaker and conservationist Roger Deakin first came to fame with his bestselling book Waterlog, which brought wild swimming into the mainstream and pioneered the 'new nature writing' genre. Published posthumously, his second travelogue, Wildwood, and collected journals, Notes from Walnut Tree Farm, were also hailed as classics. The collection is introduced by Robert Macfarlane, a dear friend of Roger Deakin's as well as his literary executor. 
 
Deakin's life at Walnut Tree Farm is the subject of the two radio soundscapes that open this collection. In The House, he introduces us to his home of almost 40 years, presenting an atmospheric sound portrait of this ancient, timber-framed Suffolk farmhouse - from the sighing of the wind to the scuttling spiders and the chirpings of the swallows up the chimney. The Garden takes us on a tour of the untamed land surrounding it - with its moat, shepherd's hut and the walnut tree that gave the farm its name - offering us an intimate record of the changing seasons. 
 
Cigarette on the Waveney sees Deakin paddling his canoe, Cigarette, from the source of the River Waveney at Redgrave Fen in Suffolk to Geldeston Locks in Norfolk. Recorded over several days and nights, this evocative audio diary charts his journey as he captures the sounds of the waterway and its wildlife. 
 
Next, in a 5-part abridged reading of Wildwood by Sean Baker, we journey with Deakin from Suffolk in the spring to the Australian outback, in search of what lies behind humanity's profound connection with wood and trees. 
 
A radio tribute to Waterlog follows, as anthropologist and wild swimmer Alice Roberts joins friends and fans of Deakin, including Robert Macfarlane, Sue Clifford and Richard Mabey, to celebrate the book's enduring legacy. 
 
And in a pair of travel documentaries, we take two delightful day trips with Roger Deakin. In Ramblings, he takes a walk with presenter Clare Balding around his home patch of Diss in Suffolk, and in On the Beach, he spends a summer day on the Essex coast near Clacton, revisiting one of the places he described so vividly in Waterlog: Jaywick Sands. 
 
© 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd 
 
The House 
Presented by Roger Deakin 
Produced by Sarah Blunt 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 2 February 2004 
 
The Garden 
Presented by Roger Deakin 
Produced by Sarah Blunt 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 5 December 2005 
 
Cigarette on the Waveney 
Presented by Roger Deakin 
Produced by Sarah Blunt 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 26 July 2005 
 
Wildwood 
Read by Sean Baker 
Abridged by Julian Wilkinson 
Produced by Amber Barnfather 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 18-22 June 2007 
 
Waterlog 
Presented by Alice Roberts 
Produced by Sarah Blunt 
With: Sue Clifford, Richard Mabey, Robert Macfarlane, Joe Minihane and Kate Rew 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 12 May 2019 
 
Ramblings 
Presented by Clare Balding 
Produced by Mark Smalley 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 20 May 2005 
 
On the Beach 
Presented by Roger Deakin 
Produced by Jane Greenwood 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 17 November 2003

Roger Deakin: A BBC Nature Collection

The legendary naturalist on wild swimming and nature, plus a reading of Wildwood

Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

Glowflake, Rocket, Small Skies, Kind Spears, Marilyn . . . 
 
Moss is known as the living carpet but if you look really closely, it contains an irrepressible light. In Twelve Words for Moss, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett highlights this often forgotten but vital foundation of the plant world with her unique blend of poetry, nature writing and memoir. Making her way through wetlands from Somerset to Country Tyrone, Burnett discovers the hidden vibrancy of these overlooked spaces, renaming her favourite species of moss as she recovers from grieving her father’s death, spurred on by the resilience and tenacity of her plant - and human - friends.

Twelve Words for Moss

Over the past 75 years, a new canon has emerged. As humans have driven the living planet to the brink of collapse, visionary thinkers around the world have raised their voices to defend it. Their words have endured, becoming the classics that define the environmental movement today. 
 
In The Democracy of Species Robin Wall Kimmerer guides us towards a more reciprocal, grateful and joyful relationship with our animate earth, from the wild leeks in the field to the deer in the woods.

The Democracy of Species

Aya Koda

An immersive journey through trees in Japan by celebrated writer Aya Koda – now available in English for the first time 
‘Trees are not just living things, but feeling beings, like us. Better keep a watchful eye over them…’ 
Ezo spruce, hinoki, cherry blossoms. Persimmon, maple, cypress. The trees of Japan cast a spell on those who visit its landscape. But as a child, writer Aya Koda realized they were more than objects of beauty. Gifted a sapling by her father, she learned that we depend on trees as much as they do on us – and spent a lifetime trying to understand them. 
Mesmerising and poignant, Tree is written in a Japanese genre called zuihitsu which means ‘following the brush’. Here we follow Aya Koda on a journey to discover Japan’s most remarkable trees. As she witnesses landslides and forests of falling ash, she encounters fresh saplings and ancient, ungovernable roots, learning how each tree contains its own unique story. 
Now translated into English for the first time, Koda’s work echoes down the generations, reminding us that trees hold a mirror to who we are, and what we leave behind.

Tree

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