3.5 out of 5 stars

Even as I look out of my office window I can see five trees in the immediate vicinity. Two are apple trees in my front garden and there are three small trees across the road on the public space. Along with our feather friends, they are still a part of the natural world that you can still see every day, even in a city; hence why we still feel a deep connection to them and the responses to them being removed in Sheffield from the streets. It is these connections that are deep within our subconscious that Stafford is celebrating. Through seventeen species of trees, including apple, poplar, ash, elm and of course oak, we will learn a little about the folklore, history and use of these trees through the ages.

There is a lot to like about this book, Stafford writes well and has filled it with lots of fascinating facts and snippets about her chosen trees. On top of that, there is lots of art and photos scattered throughout the book. Whilst it was an interesting read, for me though I felt that it lacked depth, but it is a good overview of a number of varieties of trees.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Spying is supposedly the second oldest profession, and the smoke and mirror world has inspired countless authors and films of this world where no one can trust anyone else. In this brave new digital world, gone are a lot of the old techniques and tradecraft, instead, the spooks are sifting our mind-boggling quantities of data looking for the ghosts in the machines. Except they aren’t always there. However, having a human perspective on the world around you is still an advantage. An expert operative who can determine the wheat from the digital chaff is still invaluable and in this book, Grey, takes us on some of the nail-biting missions and how having the right person in the right place at the most appropriate moment is still the way to win against enemies real and virtual.

Grey also considers where espionage is heading too. The ability of modern agencies to hoover up vast amounts  of data from every phone call, web page and email means that they are drowning in data, so much so that they do miss things. Gone are the days when these was state verses state with fairly clear, if blurred lines and long term goals that could be met. Now it is state verses small cells of a disparate organisation that do things very differently and modern spies may have missions that only last a few months. But still the key is still using human judgement that draws from intelligence from people on the ground, proper analysed signals intelligence along with other elements and combining them to form the best picture of what is happening. Overall an interesting book about a sector that still likes to hide in the shadows.

4 out of 5 stars

It was supposed to be a positive move, but Helen’s new job in Oxford feels like a bit of a dead end. Uninterested in the office politics and finding the work tedious she is looking for something to inspire her once again. Having helped a friend look after a few hives, having a colony of bees of her own really appeals, however they are an expensive hobby, especially when starting from scratch. However, the generosity of her friends, who club together to buy a colony of bees for her, gives that spark of enthusiasm for the project. A hive is purchased, delivered and built ready for the for the influx of these winged wonders. And then late spring cam round, and it was time to go and collect her present.

However, will they like their new home? There are a few nervous moments as she checks each week to see if they are surviving and it turns out that they want to stay there, but take a while to fully expand into their new residence. Spending time watching the bees as they go about their business adds a different perspective to Helen’s life. It also prompts her to start finding more out about the history of bee-keeping. On one research trip to London, she meets with a friend of a friend and tentatively there is a blossoming of friendship.

Not only is this an exploration of the hive and the bee, but this is a tender and personal memoir of Helen’s life and a touching story of her falling in love; something that she wasn’t expecting when the thought of having a beehive of her own occurred to her. I thought that it was really sensitively written too as well as being well researched and positive story. Can highly recommend it.

2.5 out of 5 stars

In 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She was awarded this for being a steadfast peaceful resistance to the draconian, petty and brutal Myanmar regime. She was under house arrest for 21 years as the leader of the National Defence League. She took all of the threats, disruption and harassment from the and look it back in the face with a wry smile and unlimited courage. She would have her friends and colleagues arrested regularly, her road was frequently blocked, especially if she had been planning to hold a meeting or gathering.

All of these overt and covert attacks would have ground most people down, but she bore it with good grace and resilience. She was sustained by her drive to see the country she loves, one day gain a functioning democracy. In these fifty-two letters, she discusses the problems that they have as a country, describes the plight of those that have suffered at the hands of the regime and the repression of the population. It is also full of minutia, she talks about the weather, taking tea and the festivals that were still permitted.

In some ways I liked this, she speaks with a strong voice and brings to life the country that very few have seen from outside. All the way through she has a very clear aim of bringing urgent and necessary change to the country change all the time she was in custody, an aim that the authorities to every opportunity to frustrate. She was released in 2010 and won the election in 2015. She has not been able to hold the presidency because she is the widow and mother of foreigners – provisions from the constitution that seem to have been written specifically to prevent her from being eligible. She was awarded the position of State Counsellor and wields power from there. She has faced criticism in the past couple of years as she has seemingly deliberately ignored the plight of the Rohingya people and the genocide that they are suffering. It tarnishes what is a good book and until that point a life that should have been celebrated.

4 out of 5 stars

It is sometimes easy to forget just how mind-bogglingly big Australia is. This vast, vast country is approximately 7.7m km@ in size and even though it is an island, it is big enough to count as a continent in its own right. It separated from Pangaea millions of years ago and the paths that evolution took with the flora and fauna were very different when compared to the remainder of the world. The people who first inhabited it are pretty special too, traces of their occupation can be found as far back as 65,000 years ago and they have a deep and passionate connection to the land as well as a rich understanding of how to survive in the blistering heat. It teems with life too; and most of it wants to kill you…

Bill Bryson had never ever visited there before. It was a country that scared him, but he was to find that the folk that live there are the total opposite of the creatures. Their cheerful extrovert personalities meant that he fitted in really well and he slowly falls in love with the country. His journeys take him from Darwin down to Alice Springs and to see the marvel that is Uluru, around the cities of the west coast, across the endless desert to Perth and he tries not to lose where the boat is on the Great Barrier reef.

If you have ever read a Bryson before you’ll come to know that these journeys are a rich vein of self depreciating humour as he observes life as it happens around him and this was as highly entertaining as his other books with several genuine laugh out loud moments. It has been a little while since I have read a Bryson and if you haven’t then I can recommend them as he is still such very very funny travel writer.

4 out of 5 stars

When people meet my children I often hear comments along the lines of; he is just like you, your daughter reminds me so much of your wife and similar comments. And it is true, their genetic inheritance comes directly from me and my wife and the blend of our genes has made three very different and unique children. What gets passed on and how is the subject of this weighty tome.

In this very researched book, Zimmer takes us back through our genetic history to show how these fragments make up our very being. Of the trillions of cells in our bodies, those that contain our DNA make us who we are, what we look like, how our health will be and countless other factors. But there is more to it than that, our genetic code is not the only thing passed from mother to child, echoes of past event from our father and his parents can be seen in the code, we get our first immune system via the placenta and the various microbes that ensure that we can live as passed on too.

There is a fascinating chapter on Chimeras – these are people who carry more than one set of DNA. This was never thought to be possible, but after various anomalies including where a mother was witnessed giving birth to a child, the DNA test said that it wasn’t her child. The investigation into it discovered how DNA can transfer between non-identical twins after one dies in the womb. A mother can even absorb some of the DNA from the child she is carrying.

There is a wealth of information and details in this substantial, but still a very readable book. Not only does he consider where we have got to in our understanding on DNA, but he contemplates the future of inheritance and what heredity will mean in years to come. Even though I never did biology while  at school, Zimmer manages to make this fairly substantial tome a straightforward book for readers like me.

4 out of 5 stars

The Black Sea is a place of contrasts. Not only is it the focal point for a number of countries, but it is the meeting point of continents and a place where different cultures contrast and meld. To discover more about this place in the world Caroline Eden circumnavigates its coast.

The surf barely lapped the shore, making the Black Sea look a solid block of blue…

She travels from Odessa to Bessarabia, then to Romania, Bulgaria and onto Turkey. In each of the places she visits, she picks away at the history and culture and meets the people of that country across a table and on a plate. Memories are frequently formed when on holiday over meals and this is her eulogy to the region. It is a wonderful mix of travelogue and recipe book,  adventures as she heads from city to city, restaurant to café, stopping at stalls to sample and purchase the fragrant foods on offer.

I have read a lot of cookery books in my time, and I can recommend this one for the prose and the food and the stunning images of the places and evocative photos of the food she ate on her journey. Also, this is a visually stunning book too, even before you have picked it up. The deep black cover with the silvered waves glisten and the black edges make this a book of contrasts, just like the place.

4 out of 5 stars

The very nerve centre of the human body is the brain. Its input is our senses, the memory helps us to learn from mistakes and controls the reactions that are needed. For hundreds of years, the brain has been a mystery to all that studied it, but only in the past few decades have we begun to scratch the surface of its capabilities. Even that is unravelling; those that thought as puberty begun, the human brain was developed have been proved wrong. The brain continues to change and adapt all through the teenage years and into adulthood.

In this excellent book on why the teenage brain is different, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, professor in cognitive neuroscience at University College London takes us into the untidy spaces within their heads to share the latest details of what is going on. From her experiments that her team have in researching the brain we will learn about why they take risks, why some friendships can be so intense, why some behave badly and others won’t talk. This time of our lives is when we can enormously creative and also destructive, a lot of mental health issues raise their head for the first time ever in teenagers.

As the father of two teenage daughters and one almost teenage son, there are a lot of things that I can relate to that she talks about in here. The brain is at a critical point in its development in teenage years and is susceptible to all sort of external stresses. Some of these can be positive, but there are a lot that have negative implications. Like all good science books it makes you think and even though this is about our most complex organ, the prose sparkles with energy and is written with clarity. Well worth reading and a worthy winner of the Royal Science Award.