Category: Review (Page 1 of 130)

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Unless you are a geologist or a quarryman, most people don’t think about rocks at all during their day. I know I am one of those people. I may take more notice when out and about, but then we’re spoilt here on the Jurassic coast. Rocks are the very foundation of our planet, our homes and our cities. They have been venerated by our ancestors for millennia too, hence why Anjana starts this book at some of the most famous rocks in the world, Stonehenge.

Why these stones were erected in this way and for what purpose, we will never really know, though modern archaeology and theories have gained a little insight into the Stone Age mind. We do know the use of some of the stone artefacts left behind, though. These tools were made by Mesolithic humans and are instantly recognisable as the shape and functions are still valid today. There is a photo of a beautiful banded gneiss mace head found in the Thames in the book. The rock it was made from is 2.7 billion years old.

That is quite an age for a rock; however, the oldest rock on Earth discovered so far is 4.4 billion years old. This fact staggered me, as this must have been one of the first rocks to solidify from lava. The zircon in the rock acts as a record of how old they are and allows scientists to look back in time. The ancient gneiss of Canada is found in more than its geological records. The rock can be found in the creation stories and rituals of the First Nation people there.
Continental drift was originally proposed as a theory in the early 20th century, but it was first proven in 1957 and is now known as plate tectonics. The speed of movement is mm per year for the fastest plates and almost no movement for others. Except for some that then, when they do move, go so quickly that it causes earthquakes and tsunamis and are a reminder that for all man’s mastery over the planet, we’re only here for a short time, and our existence is very short compared to the rocks beneath our feet.

Indigenous people coped with this natural onslaught by performing rituals to Mother Earth. Seeing the planet as a female is very common in these cultures; Gaia, Bhumi Deu and Pachamama are just three examples. Their creation stories go some way to explaining the seismic activity in these areas that the local population could understand. The ancient reverence that the New Zealand people have for a rock called Pounamu is carried forward to the rugby team, who have a Māori stone that all players touch before a game. A similar reverence for Mother Earth, but with very different rituals, can be found in her own faith, Hinduism. Mother Bhumi is the earth goddess who must be treated with due respect and not be injured by people’s labour.
Rock has a timeless quality about it; probably because geological time is on a completely different scale to human time. Our three score and ten is a mere blink of an eye compared to 55 million years or longer.

Walking into a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt is walking deep into the past. Not just the historical elements, the hieroglyphs and the way that the tomb was carved from the rock, but the limestone rock itself has its own story to tell. Rocks can bring trouble to people, too, not just from falling on people. There is arsenic present in the Himalayas, and the silt that washes down to Bangladesh causes all manner of health problems. The discovery of gold in the West of America caused the obliteration of a number of First Nation tribes in the region because of greed.
The rock that started Khatwa on her geological journey came from a volcano in the Tsavo National Park over three decades ago. She picked up this vesicular basalt whilst on a family holiday and from that moment on was hooked on rocks and has made a career from it. These deadly natural phenomena are some of the most dramatic natural processes of geology we can see in certain places around the world. The closest I have knowingly been to a volcano was when on holiday in Sicily. We didn’t get to go and see Etna, whilst there, maybe another day. If you want to have red hot rocks thrown at you, then the place to go is Iceland; genuinely the land of ice and fire.

Being classed as a space invader is not a reference to a slightly rubbish game of the 1980s, but a phrase that she is told about as she walks through the Chilterns. It is a phrase that hang heavily with her as she goes on to write about the way that colonial invaders have taken over land and resources in Brazil and other parts of South America and the efforts that the indigenous people are taking to push back and reclaim what is rightfully theirs.

Sedimentary rocks are formed from organic matter or minerals that have collected in a depression. As layers form above them, they are crushed and become rock. This process takes millions of years, but the formations that it creates are magnificent. Khatwa is in Petra looking at the rocks there, they are multicoloured, with strips of yellow, pink, white and orange, and are a thing of beauty. Leaving Petra through the narrow gorge of Siq is an experience that she has never had before; the way that the light flows around the rock is exquisite.
The Arches National Park in America is home to a number of First Nation Tribes who consider the landscapes as portals. The photos in the book only hint at how stunning they are. The reverence that they hold for the arches shows a deep spiritual dimension for the place and the rocks from which they are created from. Sadly, this often clashes with the Western view that can only see these as a source of income and possible scientific gain.

She is searching for fossils on the beautiful beaches of West Dorset. They get lucky and find an ammonite and the vertebra of an ichthyosaur. Both have been in and become part of the rocks for millions of years. Even though I have looked on the same beaches a few times, I still haven’t found either yet!
Rocks have been a constant in her life, as well as giving her qualifications and a career; they helped her get through a traumatic breakup when she was a young mother.
Rocks also undergo traumatic changes during their incredibly long life spans as they are absorbed into the crust and subjected to massive temperatures and pressures. These forces change their structure and composition to become something better and stronger after. We can have a similar recovery from life events, becoming more resilient after them.

Mountains are large and immovable objects, and people tend to see them as indestructible. They are, but also they aren’t. Something as simple as water can break them; constant freezing and thawing over countless years cracks the mountain into boulders, stone and sand, and couple that with erosion, then they do not stand a chance with geological time. Sometimes the roots of these once great mountains are the only things left. New York is an example, and the grey slate quarries in the Welsh hills are two that she explores in the book.
Erratics are those boulders that are found on the surface but are utterly different to the underlying bedrock. Nobody really knew how they had got there, so all sorts of folkloric stories were invented to explain how they arrived there. Most of them had some variation of the devil throwing them, but there are other local variations. The real explanation is much simpler: glaciers carried these enormous stones to their new resting places, but it took quite a while for science to work it out.
I must admit I don’t think about rocks a huge amount. I like looking at them when we are out and about, particularly the rocks along the beautiful Jurassic Coast in my home county. I am always a little concerned about how long the cliffs are going to last at West Bay, though.

What Khatwa does in this book is to blend the hard science of geology with the softer, more human story and how indigenous people have seen the rocks in their landscapes as an almost living entity. The rocks have whispered their own stories to the people that lived around them, and they, in turn, have made them central to their culture.

One generation of rock equals many, many generations of humans, but in a kind of strange way, the collective memory of humans overlaps the rock era. What I liked most about this book is that it opened my eyes to a new way of looking and thinking about the way humans have and need to co-exist with the landscapes around them in this only planet we have. I thought this was well worth reading.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

When I was going to school, which feels like a hundred years ago, having any label associated with you would make you a target for bullies. Back then, these labels were demeaning and patronising, and if you weren’t one of the cool kids and didn’t fit in with most of the regular students, your difference made you a target.

Even if you didn’t have a label, some kids found it really difficult to fit in with the majority of pupils. You either were lonely, or if lucky, you might find a small niche group that has similar interests. I was one of those pupils, and Joe Harkness was another. Joe has been diagnosed, and that has helped him come to terms with the way he is. I haven’t gone down that rout,e and at the moment, I am not considering following up on this. In those days, you’d be considered odd. Nowadays, in this partially enlightened time, you can get a diagnosis that is covered by the broad description of neurodivergent.

This book is Harkness’s journey into nature with his and other people’s neurodiversity. He conducted lots of interviews with people who work in all sorts of roles in nature and the conservation world. A lot were conducted face to face, but time and other circumstances meant that some took place online or by other methods. A lot were happy to share their names, details of where they worked, and any specific diagnosis, and some chose to remain anonymous. The conversations are about how they cope with life, work, the universe and moths…

There is almost no research into the effects that nature has on those with neurodiversity diagnoses. But where there have been studies, most concentrate on younger people. That is understandable, but it does miss swathes of people out. The studies showed that neurodivergent young people could concentrate much better when in a woodland setting when compared to an urban setting.

The natural world is seen as a non-judgmental space; it doesn’t tell people off, and it forgives. A balm for neurodivergent individuals. For them, being in nature is stimulating, but not excessively so. ADHD and autistic people tend to explore rather than exploit an environment, and it is a reminder of how indigenous people treat the landscape around them.
He considers if working in the conservation sector is good for neurodivergent people. Jobs in the UK are either government or NGO (RSPB and so on), and these are wide-ranging and varied. These roles can be especially suited to autistic people, the daily routines and rituals can remain the same, but the day varies because the location is different, the wildlife they observe changes, different weather and seasonal variations. The conservation sector is inherently caring; they are trying their best to look after the planet after all. There is nominally a chain of command, but this is often circumvented as the person with the best ideas and experience often takes the lead.

I thought that the Out Of The Box chapter was really interesting. He is looking at the theory that ADHD and autism are superpowers. Harkness’ initial opinion is that they aren’t. However, he talks to people who feel that their ability to hyperfocus on a task gives them a noticeable edge for certain skills, bird song identification, for example. Another individual he speaks to has dyslexia, and they feel that this gives them an ability to distil ideas that they then become meaningful and understandable to many others. Someone else has the ability to walk around a nature reserve once and have a map imprinted in their memory.

Lots of people have very niche specialist interests, some of which Harkness talks about with them. A good organisation can harness this mix of skills and by having both neurodivergent and non- neurodivergent staff will make for a stronger and more balanced team. One individual Harkness interviews, went from almost being excluded at school to creating a $50b scheme for mangrove restoration. And this is one of many stories of the successes of neurodivergent people working in conservation.

Even though things are improving for neurodivergent people, the barriers for some to gain employment in the conservation sector are sometimes set really high. It is difficult to gain entry when it feels like some of these decisions have already been taken prior to interviews. Having to undertake voluntary work in the sector only works when you have a supportive and fairly wealthy family. Should they overcome these hurdles a get the job, a starting salary of £18k is laughable but very common. So if you’re a female, neurodivergent and coloured, then it is almost impossible to be able to get a job, which hence why there are only 6% coloured people working in conservation. Less than 50% of the organisations have anything resembling an equality, diversity and inclusion policy (EDI). Link that to endemic institutionalised racism, and it isn’t going to change anytime soon.

Companies have a legal requirement to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ when employing people to ensure that all employees have a level playing field. However, the term ‘reasonable ‘ is very broad… Sadly, making a potential employer aware of your disability is a sure-fire way to not get the job. Harkness himself has had mixed responses and support from employers in the past and outlines the good and the bad. He does hear the horror stories and also writes about the organisations that are doing things really well. He notes that for some neurodivergent people, it is the interactions that they have with other people that is the problem, not the interactions that they have with nature.

Harkness looks at some of the well-known conservation organisations and their policies and, more importantly, their actions on EDI and neurodiversity. He even gets to talk to a government department about their policies. It was interesting to see that a substantial number of people who were responsible for this also have neurodivergent conditions. The better organisations use a workplace passport scheme for all employees; this makes it fair and reduces discrimination in the workplace.

Harkness also contacts a number of smaller conservation organisations to find out how they manage neurodivergent staff. About 50% of those he had contacted replied to him, and of those, they had policies and processes in place that helped neurodivergent staff to integrate and feel valued. Some of these conservation charities are tiny, only having six staff in some cases, so the office rules that bigger organisations have don’t really apply in these instances.

A friend of my wife runs a forest school, and until I read the chapter in this book, I must admit I didn’t really know a huge amount about it. The non-threatening environment works for everyone, especially the kids. He also visits a care farm that takes in kids who don’t really fit in the regular school system. If only more kids had these opportunities.

His final chapter talks about stories having a beginning, middle and end. Except life isn’t like that, especially if you’re neurodivergent or have ADHD, it is a super nova of themes, ideas, and threads to be followed. This book had come about from someone mentioning to Harkness that most people in the conservation sector were neurodivergent.

Overall, I thought this was a very interesting and informative book about how neurodivergent people can thrive in nature-centred organisations. Provided the organisation that they work for has put in place sympathetic schemes and systems for them. The thing to remember is that these systems work perfectly for ‘normal’ people too, unlike the other way around. Most of the people that Harkness has spoken to, to create this book, have had a positive experience with how they are treated, but there is the odd horror story in here! If you are or know anyone who is neurodivergent, then I think that you will find, as I did, this to be an informative and useful book. Bravo to Harkness for writing something that is very close to home and outside his comfort zone.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

The Cloud is America’s biggest employer; it provides numerous goods and services to those left in society who can still afford it. It is so large that it has to a greater extent replaced government, and its warehouses are self-contained towns with accommodation, security, and facilities built in. Gibson is the owner of this business and built it from nothing. Some of his personality quirks are evident in the way that the business functions, but he is probably one of the richest men on the planet, so he doesn’t care what people think about that. He has a terminal illness that is focusing his mind on who will take over after him.

To get in as an employee means passing a test, and the company decides on what you will be doing based on the results of that test and your previous experience. Paxton, who has been down on his luck after the Cloud took his design and made it theirs without paying him, has decided to join. He passes the test and is annoyingly allocated to security; he’d rather have been in picking. Zinnia joins at the same time and is allocated a position in picking, but there are hints that she has an alternative agenda.

Their first day there is really tough. The training has given them an outline of what is expected, but the reality is so much harder, especially for Zinnia, who is picking. Her performance is constantly monitored for speed and accuracy. However, her role is not the only one that is monitored, for all staff, their company-issued smart watches track their exact location, what they spend in the company stores, and they are not allowed to leave their accommodation without wearing it.

They soon settle into the daily grind: wake, work, eat, sleep, repeat. The days become weeks, and these then stretch into months. As they get to know each other, their relationship blossoms to an extent, but they still keep some of their innermost thoughts very secret, especially Zinnia, who is at the Cloud for ulterior motives.

This book was quite a ride! It is a thriller wrapped in a dystopian tale of untrammelled corporate power. The Cloud company has effectively replaced the American Government following social unrest, riots and then pretty much societal collapse. This corporation that Hart has dreamt up has certain similarities to a certain emporium that is well known but not always well loved. On that he has layered big brother surveillance and control, an evil narcissist boss in the style of Bond villains and near-future technologies.

I thought that the plot was fairly good, and it was really fast-paced. There wasn’t much character development, but then I wasn’t expecting it in a thriller like this. Even though I really enjoyed the book I always feel that after reading dystopia, we need those in power to read them too and begin the process of making changes so that there are more checks and balances in the vast power that corporations and their owners have. Though until they stop funding the politicians that make the rules, I can’t see this changing any time soon!!

4.5 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

It feels like we have been in a living hell for the past decade. The rise of populism and nationalism in numerous countries across the world is driven by divisive figures who are being funded by unaccountable billionaires who have their own agendas for world domination. Having a malleable population who are susceptible to the fears that inflamed by the rhetoric by these individuals leads down a path that I thought that we’d never see again after the 20th century.

So how do we go from what feels like a proper democracy to a fully-fledged dictatorship?

According to Temelkuran, there are seven distinct steps on this path from democracy to dictatorship. She writes this from the experience of having lived through the coup in Turkey and the yearning that she has to live back in her home country once again. In each step, she explains the warning signs that she saw and how they can differ in each country.

She documents how an unknown political party in 2002 began a movement for the ‘real people’ of the country. They claimed all the way through this process that they were the true representatives of the country and that it was their aim to fix the dysfunctional problems that the country had. They won the elections, and seventeen years later, they are still there. They have changed everything for the worse…

These themes are present in all political systems around the world, and the UK is not immune; Farage and Brexit come to mind. The problem is that the mainstream politicians don’t really have any answers to some of the intractable problems that are facing our society at the moment. Educated individuals with liberal and progressive views are portrayed as enemies of the people who do not understand. The new politicians demand respect; they do not think about earning it, and it is a one-way street, too. They show no respect for other views. People who do not show respect or deference to them are held in contempt and often threatened.

It is only later that the ‘real people’ come to understand that they have been fed a lie. The truth that these politicians spout changes constantly; a figure who is seen in a glowing light at the beginning can become an enemy overnight. No one dares question the narrative, so they get away with it.
Temelkuran looks at how the populists control the narrative, attacking the character rather than having a rebuttal to the discussion, claiming things that are true when they aren’t, because lots of people think that (commonly known as sheeple).

The narratives that populists have are often seen as infantile. But it gives them the ability to arrange the narrative to suit their agenda. Trying to pin them down to anything is like trying to nail a jelly to a wall. If you choose not to follow the party line, you become a target for all their ire. This is something that Temelkuran has been on the receiving end of. These people are slippery bastards.

Another crucial indicator in the slide to dictatorship is the erosion of shame and empathy. This can be seen in the shocking response to the plight of refugees and migrants who are fleeing wars and other conflicts. People have a very fluid relationship with the truth, hence the rise of the most ridiculous conspiracy theories, including one where a lad had to prove that he was a student at a school that suffered a mass shooting after the trolls in the gun lobby claimed it was a hoax and he was an actor.

Popularists rely on distractions. They say something controversial and watch as the media furore kicks off and people get agitated by it, then as people are concentrating on that change something fundamental to suit them. Later on, when it has all died down, declare that neither side is in touch with the ‘real people’. It is, of course, all nonsense, but it means that the changes they made have slipped by, unnoticed by the majority.

When they are in power, authoritarian leaders ensure they are involved in everything and that you only get something if the leader has approved it. Even the wealthy stay wealthy if he wants them to remain that way, Russia under Putin is a good example of this. As their power grows, it becomes easier to change the rules to suit themselves and the opposition is left voiceless and often imprisoned…

With right-wing authoritarianism comes hard-line misogyny; women start to lose control over how they can look after their bodies; birth control and abortion are obvious indications. If you don’t fit their ideal image as a citizen, then they don’t want you. The harassment and then beatings of those who don’t conform are first reported as ‘isolated incidents’ but they are not. They are part of a concerted campaign. If you are audacious enough to bring up these attacks, then you are the person seen to be dividing and polarising the country and not understanding the values of the ‘real people’.

It all comes down to dictators wanting idealised citizens who conform to the ‘great’ leader’s vision or cause. Though what that actually is or means is almost never communicated to anyone, as it can then be moulded and changed at their whim. AS with all dictatorships, the rules that apply to the majority of the population don’t apply to the elite, as Temelkuran finds out one day for herself.

Dictatorships have no rigid or set ideology either. They morph and reshape the agenda as it suits them. It reminds me of Animal Farm and the way that the messages to all the other animals kept changing throughout the story. The situation seems laughable, but as the grip of the dictator increases, the laughter becomes a poison in its own right.

She visits a Greek island; from there, she can see her hometown, Izmir. It is a place she misses with all her heart, but she knows that until there is a regime change in the country, she will never be able to return.

I found this a shocking book in lots of ways. I knew that Turkey was a dodgy democracy because of the issues that they had when they had it is mind to join the EU and couldn’t or wouldn’t change the way they were doing things. I wasn’t aware of just how far down this path they had ventured. Temelkuran clearly loves her country and is mournful about the way it has gone and that she no longer can live there, having been brave enough to stand up to the authorities there.

More shocking though, is when I used this prism to look at how far down this path we and other countries had gone. I really hope it is not too late…

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

After years of grubbing out hedges to make enormous fields for the huge tractors and other farm machinery, it is dawning on people that hedges are the lifeblood of the countryside. The irony is that a man from 2000 years ago could have told them this…

In some parts of the country, the hedge lines can be traced back as far as the Bronze Age and references to hedges are found scattered among lots of documents. Even though these hedges have been around a long time, following the wholesale theft of common land from the people by the aristocracy and the rich, lots more hedges were planted to enclose this land.

It is the underlying geology of the landscape that defines the plants that grow in the hedges in various parts of the country. Some areas are strong on holly, others have hawthorn, and wetter areas of the country you’ll find blackthorn. Because hedges have been part of the fabric of the country for so long, strange tales have permeated from these linear lines into folklore.

Replacing a hedge with a fence is just stupid. A fence absorbs no CO2, it cannot provide oxygen, shelter for stock, doesn’t provide nuts and berries or act as a windbreak and absorb rain. If treated to stop it from rotting, it will pollute the ground with all manner of toxins and will need replacing on a regular basis. A well-maintained and laid hedge can last indefinitely.

There was a formula for dating a hedge: Number of species per 30 yards x 110. It gives a reasonable guideline, but has been largely discredited now. The most accurate way is to look at old maps and trace the field lines and to go out into the landscape to see it for yourself. A survey of the hedges at Underhill Nature Reserve found eight species of trees and shrubs and an astounding 29 other species, five of which are seen as indicators of ancient woodland.

An ideal hedge will contain blackthorn and hawthorn (sometimes known as the Queen of trees), and whatever takes your fancy can be added to the mix. Hart even suggests adding in the non native plant and favours chokeberry because of their fruits.

Native trees support native wildlife, and in some cases, that amounts to hundreds of species. Flailing a hedge will stop it from flowering and fruiting, which is terrible for wildlife and not great for us. If you go back in time, the ancient landscapes were not dense woodland and forest, rather they were scrublands or, as Benedict MacDonald calls it, thornlands – a mix of woodland, scrub and grassland which was constantly changed by large herbivores bundling through it. In other words, a bit like the New Forest is now.

What every hedge needs is a pollard. It is a similar technique to coppicing. But rather than cutting the tree back to ground level, the branches are removed at head height. The effect is the same, though, the tree resprouts again and again. An oak that is pollarded every 50 years will provide wood to build houses and ships, and you still have the tree. A coppice could provide 96 – 180 cubic metres of wood and do this for centuries.

The next best thing to a live tree is a dead tree. Over 600 different insects require dead wood in their lifecycle. A large proportion of ancient hedges can be dead wood, especially where the hedge layer has filled in the gaps with some of the surplus brushwood.

Pretty much every plant in a hedgerow has some other use. Mind you, back then, they couldn’t obliterate the ‘weeds’ with the ultra-toxic chemicals that we now have access to. Some gardening websites claim that it is ‘natural’ to destroy these plants with flamethrowers… Hedgerow plants have often been used for the treatment of various ailments, for example, foxgloves for heart conditions, and so on. There are some really wacky cures out there…

In 2011, a guy called Dr Rob Wolton took a look at his 90m long hedge to see just how many species it contained. It was supposed to be a yearlong project, but he is still going. So far, he has found over 2000 (yes 2000) species in this hedge, and he is still going!

We should remember that we rely on all of these other lifeforms to live, too. The current insect apocalypse that is happening suggests that we have had a 75% drop in insect numbers, with some almost certainly going extinct, some species of which we will never know. This has a knock-on effect up and down the food chain, because if we don’t have pollinators, then we don’t have food to eat. Gone are the thousands of swallows that you’d see in the summer skies.

Hart considers the birds that have come to rely on hedgerows for their survival and expands on how a fully formed hedge can spell the difference between survival and ‘thrival’. As well as birds and insects, a decent hedge will give protection to a number of mammals and other creatures, in particular the hedgehog. I also learned that we used to have a species of tree frog in this country; sadly is a species long gone from the shores.

On top of all the other great benefits that a hedge can give us, it also acts as a year-round larder. There are fresh green leaves in the spring, and a plethora of fruits and berries in the autumn. Plus, numerous plants could be used for medicinal purposes, provided you knew what you were doing… Access to a hedge means you can fill your bottle and plate all year.

Politicians of all hues keep going on about planting trees to help combat climate change. It would help, but it would be good if they got behind planting hedgerows. Oh, and stopped accepting large donations from the oil industry…

Rant aside, rather than planting woodlands, so often done with the wrong trees in the wrong place and using dreadful plastic tree guards, we’d be better off planting and maintaining our hedgerows. They absorb carbon, the wood from them has multiple uses, they shelter crops and stock, stop soil erosion and don’t take up vast swathes of land. In fact, hedges’ ecosystem services outnumber woodlands and meadows. Plus, if coppiced regularly, it can be fairly profitable too.

I really liked this book. Hart is a well-informed and engaging writer, and this book is wide-ranging and interesting, especially when most people would think this is quite a narrow subject. If you are one of those people who think that we are not putting enough time and energy into caring for and planting new hedgerows, then this book would be right up your holloway.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

A wren is normally a very difficult bird to see, but you know they are there because of the noise that they can make. How a bird that tiny can have such a loud song is surreal. Hoffman is lucky enough to see one wren one day, and then he sees another, and another. They are all heading towards an abandoned swallow’s nest, probably to keep warm in the approaching winter storm that is about to hit Prespa.

How Julian Hoffman and his wife ended up in this part of Greece is quite a story, but it began with a book by Giorgos Catsadorakis called Prespa: A Story of Man and Nature. Hoffman and his wife managed to read the entire book as well as polish off two bottles of wine, and not only did they want to visit the place, but they had decided that they wanted to leave London and move there.

It would be a huge, but exciting step into the unknown.

They arrived at a guest house in the village of Agios Germanos a little while after. The proprietor of the establishment asked them how long they were thinking of staying, and they told him they intended to move there for good. Vassilis took on the task of finding them a permanent place to live. It took a while, but he succeeded. They piled their scant belongings in the corner of the house and began their new life.

The village that he lives in is shaped by the mountains and the lakes. They are known as ancient lakes, and there are only a few that are this old around the world. The great age means that the diversity of plants and other life is huge. It is something that he comes to appreciate as he walks through past ancient junipers and into an oak forest. But it is also a reminder that the old ecosystems are equally reliant on human presence and that the absence of people can cause other pressures.

They slowly met the village residents, and Germano finally got to use the one English phrase that he had learnt on them! He was one of those who, after WWII, had been forced to go into exile. When he returned to Greece a while later, he was interred and then tortured for being on the other side ideologically, all accused with scant evidence. Even though the residents are Greek, they don’t necessarily feel a strong allegiance to the home country; rather, they have an empathy with people who are just across the border from them, as they know they are all in it together.

Hoffman delves into his past, explaining how he went from liking to natural world to loving it. It happened on a trip to India, and he can pinpoint the exact moment to when he saw some Sarus cranes. It was a moment that he knew changed his life and new him a new purpose and direction.

The village that they reside in, is described as remote. However, back in the 1990s, it was also restricted; permits needed to be applied for and approved before you could travel there because it shares borders with Albania and Macedonia. These restrictions have eased, but there are still times when people need to take a madcap route to get from one place to another rather than being able to cross the border directly.

Their first years in Prespa, they grew their own vegetables organically and even made a business from it. It was tough work, though and a very steep learning curve. However, working the land this way connected them to the place on a deeper level. They would find traces of the past in their ground, too; coins and bullet cases would regularly come up as they dug the soil over.

This part of Greece gets very cold; not only do they have to put up with snow most winters, but if they are not careful, they can get frozen pipes that can take a month to thaw out. Water is a precious resource up there; they used the local river to irrigate their land and closely followed the local rules for equality. They would find that some would take more than their fair share and it would cause all manner of issues, and is kind of a reflection of what is happening elsewhere in the world.

Getting to know the residents of the village is the key that unlocks the history of the place. Stories of the first road being built and learning about the way that the water levels in the lake have risen and fallen over time taught them so much. They were helped out at one particular incident by their neighbours and were left shaken and grateful for all the assistance they received.

One of things that always surprises me about the pictures that Hoffman posts on his social media channels is just how much snow he gets there. He lives in a Mediterranean country (albeit at altitude) and gets loads, and I live in Dorset, and we get almost no snow here now. When they first moved, the summers used to be wonderful there, but with climate change, it is becoming far more dangerous with higher temperatures and numerous wildfires in the region, as well as droughts, floods and intense hail. Events that used to occur once a lifetime are now becoming more frequent. Scientist can predict that the frequency of these events will increase; what they can’t predict is how many there will be or their intensity.

In one part of the narrative, Hoffman writes about the COVID pandemic. How surreal the various lockdowns and restrictions that were imposed on populations by governments and health professionals as we tried to get a grip on the virus. It reminds him of the stories that his great-grandfather told him about being interred during World War 1, not because of anything that he had done, but because of where he had happened to come from. He posed no threat, but the authorities at the time decided not to take a chance with him and many others.

In their second year growing organic food, they had a massive shock when their biggest customer said that they didn’t need anything over the summer. So, they started preserving food and sales of these would become the bulk of their income in time. Sadly, even that came to an end as the financial crisis of 2008 bit.

Unsure about what to do next, they considered emigrating to Canada, but dithered over the decision. That dithering was a blessing in disguise, as an opportunity to do conservation work and ornithological surveys arose. They now had a more secure future and could stay in their village. His wife ended up managing a bear diet study, which meant collecting lots of bear scat (ye,s they do crap in the woods and lots of other places too). Living near bears and wolves has its own pressures, and Hoffman has a couple of really close encounters. Local farmers see them as a threat, and unless compensation schemes are quick to pay for losses, farmers tend to take matters into their own hands, with inevitable, tragic endings.

Brexit (sigh) adds another layer of complexity to them living in Greece. They and many others had the right to live in the country until we took the stupid decision to leave. To stay, they need to undertake citizenship, and whilst waiting at the hotel near where this takes place, they are distracted by the number of kestrels whizzing by.

It would be a back injury that would spell the end of their small holding, and Hoffman needs a trip to the local hospital for medical intervention. While in the hospital, he was given a pen and a pad, and he began his writing journey, starting with a story about pelicans, and ending up with this, his third book, and this doesn’t feel like this is the end of his writing journey.

Giorgos Catsadorakis’ book was what inspired them to make this journey to Prespa, and he was passionate about the pelicans of the lake, too. So much so that Catsadorakis persuaded the fishermen to be proud of them and not see them as a threat to their livelihood. It worked, though sadly, the pelicans now have multiple threats from climate change, HN51 and the lake water levels that are causing havoc.

People raise their voices against things; we rarely raise them for.

This is a lovely book about the path that Hoffman took to find a place to live in the world. Prespa is his anchor point, and it gives him the strength to move around the world, knowing that he still has that Lifeline attached. It is very well written, too. Having heard him speak at a book event, he is very knowledgeable about all sorts of things, and that same well of information comes across in this book. If I were to have one minor gripe about the book, it didn’t follow a linear timeline, which is my personal preference; it is wide-ranging and jumps around a fair amount. If you are looking for a book that combines a heady blend of travel, natural history and environmental concerns, then this should be on your reading list.

Another month rolls by, and another almost the same totally unrealistic TBR appears that is very similar to last month! No idea how many of these I’ll get through, but I hope at least 15!

Daily Reading

A Tree A Day – Amy-Jane Beer

An Insect a Day: Bees, Bugs, And Pollinators For Every Day Of The Year – Dominic Couzens & Gail Ashton

Still Reading

Handbook of Mammals of Madagascar Hardcover – Nick Garbutt

The Spymasters: How The CIA’s Directors Shape History And The Future – Chris Whipple

Themed Reads

When the Rivers Run Dry: Water – The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century – Fred Pearce

The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future – David Wallace-Wells

Letters to the Earth: Writing Inspired by Climate Emergency – Various

Plus If I can get to these:

Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation – Edward Glaeser, David Cutler

Banksy: The Man Behind The Wall – Will Elsworth Jones

The Fifth Risk – Michael Lewis

Constable: Paintings, Watercolours and Drawings – Leslie Parris

Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain – Pen Vogler

Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labour Powering AI – James Muldoon, Mark Graham & Callum Cant

#20BooksOfSummer (I know it isn’t summer anymore…)

The Cruel Stars – John Birmingham

The Solar War – A.G. Riddle

Cage of Souls – Adrian Tchaikovsky

Jade City – Fonda Lee

The Old Drift – Namwali Serpell

World From My Armchair

The Year of Living Danishly: My Twelve Months Unearthing the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country – Helen Russell

Along the River that Flows Uphill: From the Orinoco to the Amazon – Richard Starks

Review Books

Small Earthquakes: A Journey Through Lost British History In South America – Shafik Meghji

21 Lessons for the 21st Century – Yuval Noah Harari

Your Journey Your Way: The Recovery Guide to Mental Health – Horatio Clare

Doomed Romances: Strange Tales of Uncanny Love – Joanne Ella Parsons

Phantoms of Kernow – Joan Passey (Ed)

Return of the Ancients: Unruly Tales of the Mythological Weird – Katy Soar  (Ed)

Books I’m clearing

Weather – Storm Dunlop

Dilbert 2.0 – Scott Adams

Russians Among Us – Gordon Corera

Free: Coming of Age at the End of History – Lea Ypi

Library Books

Stone Lands: A Journey Of Darkness And Light Through Britain’s Ancient Places – Fiona Robertson

The Ponies At The Edge Of The World: A Story of Hope and Belonging in Shetland – Catherine Munro

Nature Needs You: The Fight To Save Our Swifts – Hannah Bourne- Taylor

Sea Bean: A Beachcombers Search for Magical Charm – Sally Huband

Poetry

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud – Ana Sampson (Ed)

Book Club

Never Had a Dad – Georgie Cudd

So are there any from that list that you have read, or now seeing them, now want to read? Let me know in the comments below.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Ian Carter had lived in Norfolk and then Devon for a while. Both were nice places to live, but they didn’t feel wild enough for Carter. This nagging feeling was not helped by trips to the West of Scotland; it is a land that is still shaped by humans, but it felt so much wilder than Devon. It took half an hour of mooching around the garden to make the inevitable decision, they were going to have to move to the west of Scotland and specifically Galloway.

They are fortunate to find a house that meets their requirements and constraints. Within a few minutes’ walk from the house, he can feel properly in a wild space. If he walks for 45 minutes, there is no sign of roads and cars and not a hint of a man-made sound. This is not a guidebook of the region, more of a story of the first months there and the discoveries that he makes.

After unpacking and settling in, he discovers that one of his favourite authors, Derek Ratcliffe, had written a book, Galloway and the Borders, and he didn’t have a copy. This omission was quickly rectified. As Carter read his new book, he learnt of Ratcliff’s passion for the uplands of the region and the pleasure he got from observing the wildlife, a similar theme to his other books.

Carter roams widely from his home, a luxury afforded to him by the progressive laws in Scotland on access to the countryside. A frequent route covered is over the burn and then heading straight up hill. The wildlife that he ends up seeing tends to wander all over the place rather than sticking just to one particular place. He dips into the National Atlas of Birds published in 1976, and it is a bleak reminder of scarce gains and massive losses that have happened in the past four decades.

Carter devotes a whole chapter to the red squirrel. He has six regular visitors to his garden, and he has learnt to recognise them. They are clinging on there, but the threat of the grey squirrels and the illness they can pass on is never far away.

Even though finding the wild here is easier than in Devon, it is still not a true wilderness. That has long gone from this country, with almost every square metre having been affected by humans at some point. It is rural, and there are lots of farms around, and they squeeze as much as they can from the land. The modern farm vehicles are huge so they can reach all parts of the fields nowadays, and there are small areas that are left untouched.

The sika plantations are cool, dark and slightly oppressive places. Carter considers them an alien eyesore on the uplands of Galloway. That said, he does recommend visiting one, though, for the assault on the senses that you get. Above these areas are places that couldn’t be planted, so they have been rewilding themselves. Carter likes this part of the landscape, though he keeps a careful eye out for adders when scrambling up.

He takes a longer trip up into the hills with an overnight stay. He is aiming to look for glow worms, but he wants to take time to look at the wider landscape and visit an ancient hillfort. It gives him time to consider the ongoing debate on what is or isn’t an alien species. He mentions The New Wild by Fred Pearce, which, if you haven’t read it, is an excellent book.

It takes him 90 minutes to walk from his home to the cliffs. These face the Atlantic and suffer the wrath of the storms that roll in each year. It is also a haven for seabirds that nest on the cliffs and fly out to the open ocean to feed. He enjoys spending time there watching them returning to feed their chicks. Just off the coast is Heston Island, and accessible when the tide is low. He spends a night there and, as well as the numerous seabirds, sees otters and porpoises.

He shares his new home with two species of bats, and their garden is host to red squirrels, badgers and pine martens and lots of different species of birds. Lots of small birds bring in the raptors, and he frequently sees sparrow hawks and peregrines passing by.

The area that he has chosen to live in has a little bit of everything. The hills in the distance are not quite mountains, but they feel like it after climbing them. Up there, you used to be able to see eagles, but they were harried and persecuted to the point of extinction in the white-tailed eagles case. Thanks to reintroductions and public opinion taking a really dim view of illegal killings of these magnificent birds, they are making a comeback.
The drystone walls here are hundreds of years old, and they have developed their own ecosystem. They are not as old as the scrap of woodland nearby. This is a remnant of temperate rain forest left over from the larger woods that cover the area.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

It is kind of fitting that at the beginning of Matthew Yeomans’ walk around Wales, it begins in a rainy gloom. He is in Cas-Gwent (Chepstow) in his friend, Andy’s, kitchen, drinking coffee and peering out the window at the rain.

They decide that waiting for fine weather might take a while, they don their waterproofs, and step out of the warm house into the rain. At the start of the trail, there is a stone monolith and a metal sculpture that Yeoman describes as being similar to a baked potato in foil. The other odd this about this coastal path is that they are two miles from the coast. Details…
This part of the coast is not renowned for its beauty, however, it is rich in history. It is rich in historic sites, and finds there have been artefacts discovered all the way back to the Neolithic.
They get wet again. They pass some guys from Bristol who are fishing, who, from what they tell them, have not had any luck catching anything. It is not long before they pass some of the locals, who are also fishing, who tell them that the other guys are fishing in completely the wrong place…

Yeoman and his friend, Jeff, are now walking in a gale (this isn’t selling a walking holiday in Wales to me!!). Approaching Cardiff, they come across a note saying that the path is closed for emergency flood defence work. A reminder that climate change is upon us and not going away. They take an inland detour, and it means that they can stop at the Royal Oak pub, one of Jeff’s old haunts.

Whilst they are in Cardiff, he explores the coastal areas and looks at what the authorities are doing to stop flooding. He walks along the canal that was built to transport bulk materials to the port for export and ends up at the enormous Bute East Dock. The barrage they have built seems to be helping, but how it will cop in the future is anyone’s guess.
It was at Lavernock Point that Marconi demonstrated to the world his radio transmission invention. They take a path with a dead end on a sign and inevitably end up walking back. Amusingly, on the back of that sign is another that says ‘told you so’. They walk through an area called The Bendricks; turns out to be a section of prehistoric cliffs dating back to the Triassic period. They are soon walking through Barry Island, best known for the sitcom Gavin and Stacey, something that I have never watched, before they head onto the Glamorgan Heritage Coast. Known for smuggling in the past it is now suffering from coastal erosion.

Port Talbot is not a place that conjures up picturesque scenes with it ominous steel works looming over the town. There are two possible routes that they can take, and they decide on the lower route. It is as grim as they are expecting, but they are assured by other walkers that it does improve. And it does.
Revisiting Rotherslade Rock brings back childhood memories. It is a place that he brought his own kids back to and watches them climb the same rock that he did as a kid. This part of Wales has a strong Anglican feel to it. This was because the Welsh often rebelled and the Norman invaders imposed a strong control on the area. Returning to Pobbles Bay Beach reminded him just how awful it was for playing cricket.

He picks his way across a salt marsh and passes Tinopolis or Llanelli as it is more commonly known. His walking companion for this stage is his son, and they embark on a very personal pilgrimage to see where his grandparents were married. They walk as far as they are able through the Castlemartin firing rang,e where the wildlife flourishes amongst the ordinance.
Pembrokeshire is a wild and beautiful place. Or it was when I visited a couple of years ago. Yeomans is there to walk part of the path conceived by Ronald Lockley, who was a guy who ended up on Skokholm and became an expert in the birds that were there. Milford Haven is the location of an oil refinery, and it was where a tanker spilt 72,000 tonnes of crude oil in the mid-1990s. Wildlife was devastated at the time, but then recovered enough to then suffer water temperatures that were 5 °C higher because of climate change. They then walk through the last place that a foreign power tried to invade.

Living by the sea brings forth stories that are, in essence, true, but are steeped in the folklore of the sea. This part of Wales is no different. There are stories of giants, lost lands, mermaids and old magic. Golf links are found by the shore, and it is thought that these will go as the sea level rises, a problem brought home when he is asked to map a new route for the Wales Coast path. The next stage of his walk passes Portmeirion and onto Port Madoc, where the cliffs are battered constantly by the waves. We will have to see how Wales and the UK cope and adapt in the coming years.
It was a fire at an RAF site that began Welsh nationalism and marked the start of the pushback against English domination. Like the West Country, Wales also has a big problem with second home ownership and locals are priced out of the market. Second homes are now being taxed more, but if this will have the desired effect and money is fed back into the local economy, only time will tell. People who want to live there now can’t, as a £20k salary isn’t going to buy a £1m house.

Yeomans is now in hill country, as he discovers as he walks up the road to Trefor; it nearly kills his legs! He is fast approaching the island of Ynys Mon. He can cross a bridge to get there now; previously, he would have had to cross by boat, and the tides are treacherous. It is the place where one of the first environmental protection laws was passed. Elizabeth the First ordered the dunes to be replanted with marram grass and to punish those who were caught stealing it.

Smuggling was rife back in the 18th century; illicit goods would be shipped from the Isle of Man. It was lucrative and dangerous and could be deadly. One group of smugglers used the power of their women, who were believed to be witches; a curse from them would deter most people. It was a shipwreck here that gave us the Met Office and the beginnings of weather prediction.
Yeomans has finally reached the last leg of his walk. He thinks about the parts that he has enjoyed walking through, even though he has only covered about half of the full 870 miles. It is enough to see the havoc that climate change will bring to this coastline.

This was an enjoyable book in lots of ways. His account of the places that he walks through and descriptions of the things he sees are really good. He brings to life the richly layered history of the country. The other focus of the book is the grim realities of climate change, rising sea levels and coastal erosion, which, while we need to know about it, makes for less enjoyable reading. I live fairly close to the coast and it makes for sobering reading. I like Yeomans’ writing, it feels like a conversation in a pub garden, overlooking the sea whilst the sun goes down. He is not confrontational about climate change, just exasperated that governments are still dithering while it accelerates. Well worth reading.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Immigration is in the news constantly at the moment. But the facts are often obscured by the various agendas that particular news agencies wish to push.
This story is about a group of Africans who are hoping to cross the straights of Gibraltar into Europe with the hope of making a new life there.

The narrator and his cousin are waiting in a café, and Red is crapping himself, so much so that the trafficker is threatening to leave him behind. They are an eclectic group of people, including one guy who has been deported three times from Europe, is still waiting to go back again. It was hard to say if it was nerves or the anticipation that was driving them.

Reda had a troubled upbringing and then suffered the tragic loss of his mother. It was to affect him deeply for the rest of his life.

Nura is bringing a baby with her, and the baby keeps crying, which worries the trafficker. They put both of them under an upturned boat, and the baby calms. She is hoping to find her husband in Europe; he has been there for a year now, but she has heard nothing from him. If she were to find him, she would give him the news that he was a father.

Yussef was waiting in the café because of a tragedy of his doing that had befallen his family. There was nothing left for him in Africa and no reason to stay.
The man mountain that was, Pafadnan, seemed calm and serene. Now he was suffering from some sort of seizure or panic attack, which was worrying to say the least. He is calmed by another member of the party.

Yarge had been employed by the rich white men and was working in a privileged position. Until one day, he wasn’t. He had saved all that he had earned to be able to make this trip.

For the group, waiting to travel is worse than travelling. The anticipation is cut short by the fear of being caught or the boat getting into trouble at sea. The narrator has time to look back over his past life, reliving the memories that were seared into his mind.

They are a snapshot of the people in Africa who are desperate enough to want to leave their present circumstances behind and who have been seduced by the promise of a better life in Europe. However, what they see in the media and online is utterly unlike the life that they will have should they make it across the straits. The moment comes, and the trafficker moves them into the boat. They are all holding onto that promise they made themselves about that new life in Europe.

This is a poignant book in lots of ways. It highlights just how desperate some people are to leave their current situation for all manner of reasons. They see the life that they could have in Europe, focusing on the good parts and ignoring the rumours and the bad stories that they hear. To make that change is to take an enormous risk at great cost. Not just financially, but emotionally, leaving behind a life they knew for one that holds all sorts of perils.

Quite how the author manages to portray all of this in such a short book is quite astonishing. In all this drama, he writes with compassion and empathy; we know this is one ending of their lives. He makes the tension palpable; I felt that I was waiting with them on the beach; their back stories add context and show us the reason why they have made this choice. But their fear of the unknown is evident in all the characters, too. It is a chance they would regret not taking. Well worth reading and can recommend reading it alongside We Came By Sea by Horatio Clare, which is real-life stories of boat people and the individuals they deal with as they try to settle in this country.