4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

In the winter of 1705, a young organist set off to walk from Arnstadt to Lübeck to visit the organist and composer Dieterich Buxtehude. This 250-mile journey was to become pivotal for this teacher and as yet unknown composer, Johann Sebastian Bach. He had got permission for four weeks leave, but his visit ended up taking more than four months which upset his current employers at New Church, Arnstadt. It wasn’t a pilgrimage in the usual sense, rather he was continuing the long tradition of being a wandering scholar. He would pass through a series of cities, duchies and mini-states, would be a transformative moment in his career.

Three centuries later Horatio Clare set off on the same journey, to follow in his footsteps immerse himself in the landscape and perhaps gain some insight and understanding to the great man. Clare was not alone like Bach though, nor was he armed like Bach almost certainly was, instead, he was accompanied by Richard who was recording the journey and Lindsey who was producing it for BBC Radio 3.

It is though a sky cannot be quite large enough to contain the gentle venerations of the cello.

Some of the noises that they encounter would have been the same as Bach encountered on his walk, the burble of the river, bird calls and songs and the wind rustling through the trees, but compared to those days when working on the land was essential to survival, they encounter almost no one on parts of their walk. There would be no drone of traffic, rather Bach would have heard the squeak of cartwheels behind the heavy breathing of horses. As Clare emerges from the paths into the cities, he knows he is treading the same cobbles that Bach will have walked upon too.

The sun goes down leaving a crimson scripts and a huge flourish of flared cloud above pine forestry.

Clare’s describes his walk as being close on the heels of Bach’s ghost, and as they arrive in Lubeck the anticipation is electric. Entering the church send shivers up his spine, It is not the same building, having been rebuilt after World War 2, but Bach’s still presence permeates the space. There is something deeper going on here too, the music that Bach wrote stemmed from what he learnt and mastered here in the freedom that Lübeck allowed. Something of his Art is a well researched and passionate about its subject, however, it is the quality of Clare’s writing and his keen eye describing the places they walk through make this a special book to read.

3 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

The bicycle today is ubiquitous. You can rent them in London for as little as £2 a day and travel all over the place. People have used them to cycle around the world in record-breaking times to others who are still going on their lifetime adventures. Should you wish to buy one you can spend a couple of hundred quid to way north of £5k, but regardless of how much it cost it can take you places.

Wind the clock back 120 years or so and this new invention was affecting society in many ways. After they discarded the largely pointless hobby horse and developed the safety bicycle, this simple, efficient machine had a significant impact on the society of the day and changed the lives of everyone who swung their leg over the cross bar. When they had enough money to acquire a bike, this was the first time the working class person could travel faster than walking pace and it gave women far more independence than society was really ready for.

Manners has scoured the archives, delving into newspaper report, cycling club journals and reading contemporary accounts from authors such as H.G. Wells for details on the way this machine revolutionised society. He has found loads of amazing photos to show the cyclist of the time and how even then the bike had begun to evolve. There are chapters on how it changed fashion for women, how racing in the UK went in a different direction in the UK compared to the continent. The biologist Steve Jones ranked the bicycle as the most important event in recent human evolution as it meant that people could look farther afield than their village for their lifelong companions and the chapter on the cycling clubs is a bit of a riot. It is an enjoyable read about the revolution that the bicycle caused in the Victorian Age.

5 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

The Mississippi is the fourth longest river in the world and drains a total of 31 states with a watershed of1,245,000 square miles over its 2300 mile length. In parts, it is up to a mile wide, though the largest lake is 11 miles wide. Raban had first come across this river that cleaves America in two after reading about the Tales of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and wanted to travel along it and absorb the American culture. Starting in Minneapolis which is about 200 miles from the source of the river, he bought a 16-foot Aluminium boat with a 15hp engine, a tiny minnow compared to the vastness of the river. After a crash course in how to handle his new transport and some advice that will prove invaluable later, he is ready to depart, but he just needs to get through the first of the massive locks.

That terrifying experience achieved, the next few days are quite relaxed while cruising downstream. After a days boating, he pulls into the bank to find the nearest hotel or motel and to find some of the locals to talk to. It is a dangerous trip and he has a few near misses. Thankfully he follows the advice that he was given earlier to get off the river when the sky looks strange and just misses a horrendous storm. Apart from these moments, it is a relaxed trip, he enjoys smoking a pipe while watching drifting down the river, only resorting to the whisky when he has been scared witless. One lock keeper advises him to travel at night, but it nearly gets him killed by a barge, so he decides against that.

Where this book comes alive though is his interaction with the people that he meets. He talks to anyone and everyone, from politicians to widows, rednecks and the transient men who work the river. In Memphis, he joins the black reverend judge, Otis Higgs, campaign to overturn the incumbent mayor and sees the endemic racism that was bubbling under the surface of society, something that is worryingly prevalent once again. Every day the river teaches him something new, sometimes it is about the places he passes and other times it is about himself.

This is the second of his books that I have read. The intention is to read them in the order that he published them. Really enjoyed Arabia, but this is another level up again. He is a keen observer of people and places and his writing is spectacular, probing and lyrical. He can sketch a place or a person in a scant number of words, making you feel that you are bobbing along in the boat or sitting alongside him at a bar. Fantastic book. Looking forward to the next, Coasting.

4.5 out of 5 stars

One of our largest wading birds is the Curlew. To give you some idea of its size, the body is about the same size as a herring gull, but with much longer legs and rather than a bright yellow beak it has a gently curving bill, perfect for finding its food in the mud flats. They have a distinctive call that evokes so much for many people and that along with their looks has inspired poems and paintings.

About a month ago we headed out to Arne on the other side of Poole Harbour and there were four curlews in the River as it flowed into the harbour. Sadly though, all of these things that make this bird so special for so many people are almost lost to us. Most people will have never heard the cry or seen this species of bird, and it seems that most people never will. Across Europe, numbers have dropped around 20% and in Ireland, over the past three decades, next pairs have fallen from 5,000 pairs to just 130. Rightly so it has gone on the red list.

To see for herself, Mary Colwell decided to walk from their breeding grounds in the West Coast of Ireland to the east coast of the UK. Before this 500 mile journey begun though, she heads to Snettisham in East Anglia to see a flock of the birds. A few weeks later she arrived in Ireland to see a project in Country Antrim and begin her walk. The plan was to arrive in Wales as they were incubating their eggs,  find them with the chicks in the western part of England and arrive back on the East Coast six weeks later to see the fledgelings making their first attempt to fly.  It is this part of the country that the curlews would begin their preparations for the winter

Colwell’s journey is almost a pilgrimage in respect of these birds. She is supported by those who are also horrified by the catastrophic collapse in numbers. The writing is really special too, she is passionate about these birds in particular and her love of the natural world is clear as day in her prose. There is something else in this book too, not anger, more absolute fury, so much so that Colwell used the walk to raise money to heighten awareness of their predicament. Given that it is thought that we have lost around 60% of animals this should be essential reading for anyone interested in the subject. As a small aside, it does have a stunning ‘naked’ hardback cover with lovely gold blocking and has lovely illustrations by Jessica Holm scattered throughout.

5 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

With their slightly naff arcades and a stiff enough wind to blow sand in your ice cream, there is some unique and nostalgic about the British seaside. The cry of the herring gull is one of the distinct sounds that make the trip to the coast; for some, it is a special sound, others, however, detest these bold avians. However, their reputation is not great though, they are known as bin chickens and frequently called something ruder especially after they have just purloined your chips. In this modern world, there are a lot of creatures suffering at the hand of man, but some survive and others thrive. Gulls are one of those that are making the most of the way we are now using our landscape.

Where gulls win though is our wastefulness these days, we throw so much rubbish away as well as littering the cities and countryside that they have become intertwined and dependent on us. As we are not allowed to incinerate rubbish these days, the items that we cannot recycle have to go into landfill. On every waste site around the country, you will see gulls in their hundreds, sifting through the plastic searching for titbits to eat. The generic, and incorrect term, seagull covers all of these large white birds. But if you take time to stop and look at them you will start the see the difference between the various species that live in the UK. Until recently it is only with the science of DNA testing that now that we are seeing the subtle difference between very similar looking gulls and that are many more subspecies than was first thought.

A ghost gull – the colour of dirty ice or wood ashes. It was like an ice-light or snow lantern on the shore.

Tim Dee has been a bird watcher since his teens, where he would try and look at almost anything with feathers, but he is becoming a “larophiles” or gull enthusiast as they pique his curiosity now. He heads to Essex to one of the main landfill sights for London to help catch and ring them and realises just how large they are when handling them. He travels backwards and forwards across the country seeking them, as well as heading to South Africa and then Madagascar to see their gulls. It is wide-ranging too, he finds gulls in books, those that have made it to the big screen as well as those that have had their fifteen minutes of infamy in the news. Mostly though this is a eulogy to a bird that most would not even consider worth watching, birds that he can see every day when he closes his front door in his home city of Bristol, birds that are intrinsically linked to us. Thought that this was another brilliant read from Tim Dee and after reading this I am never going to look at gull in the same way. Very highly recommended; if you haven’t read his other books, then I would urge you to do so.