The Nature of Autumn by Jim Crumley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Each season offers its own basket of delights, in winter we have the skeletal trees set against the grey skies, spring brings an outpouring of life and acid greens. Summer, such that it is, is a time of balmy days and abundant food. Before you know it, autumn is upon us once again and nature starts its most dramatic change of all. As the light ebbs, leaves start the process of leaching chlorophyll back into the tree and changing to a fantastic range of colours, the warm days are tempered by sharper mornings and the mists soften the countryside.

Autumn is one of Jim Crumley’s favourite seasons, an emotion triggered after seeing geese flying overhead when he was young. He takes us on a journey around his home country of Scotland travelling from the lowlands up into the Highlands and across to the islands to see the Autumn unfold. His travels take him to see the vast whooper swan flocks that have headed down from the Arctic, the ancient brocks that only exist in this part of the world and he seeks out the Redwoods that grow there. His keen eyes see the golden eagles that float over the mountains, the traces of otters and beavers that live in the rivers, the fleeting glimpses of deer in the woods the blur of a stoat and watching an owl float silently over a field.

There is nothing particularly profound in here, just the stories of a man who takes the time to head out as often as he can to sit and watch the world inexorably grind through the first flush of autumn to the arrival of the snows. He is great at finding the words that fill in the picture of the place that he is visiting; so much so that you feel that you are sitting alongside him at certain points as he takes in the views. As well as being a eulogy to autumn, it is a reflective book too, he takes a moment to celebrate his late father and grandfather and their achievements. It did take a little away from the main point of the book though, but it is still worth reading for his gentle, lyrical language.

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Where Poppies Blow by John Lewis-Stempel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There has been awful lot of history written about the horrors of the First World War, we have first-hand accounts from those that fought and suffered, writers who composed some of the most poignant poems and a raft of historical documents and archaeological reports that build a picture of the time. Even though the war dragged on for four years, not all of it was spent fighting. The soldiers had time away from the front lines and the misery of the trenches and when they did they found they could draw comfort from the similarities in the north French landscape to the countryside that they had left behind and that some would never see again.

For it is for the sake of the wolds and the wealds
That we die

Whenever the troops had a spare moment they would take time in between the bombs to observe the birds that were trying to eke out an existence in the war too. It was one of the most popular hobbies of soldiers. Flowers played a large part in soldier’s lives too, some had time to plant and tend gardens, but the image of poppies and cornflowers blooming after the devastation of war is one of the enduring images that remained with the shattered soldiers leaving the battlefields. Some of the officers also hunted, spending hours chasing what little wildlife was left in the fields, some made rods to fish, other took the easier option of dropping bombs in the rivers. Not only did the British Army empty the fields of the workers, they took the horses too, and when they had almost all gone, they shipped them over from Canada. The soldier’s relationship with their equine friends was made closer by the perils of war. In total eight million horses, donkeys and mules died during the conflict, a horrendous number. There were also a huge number of other animals at the front too, the battalions had their mascots which varied from the fairly common dogs, to the less common goats to the frankly unusual orang-utan and cows. Rats and lice were endemic in the trenches causing yet further misery to those knee deep in mud.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row

Lewis-Stempels book is a very different take on the usual histories of the First World War. It is full of personal stories of the way that the soldiers saw nature and how it gave them the motivation for them to carry on in the darkest of times. The prose is almost secondary in this book, as there are so many poems and anecdotes about the natural world around them that he has collected together. It is not all grim reading, there are some really positive parts to the book, but I thought the list of those scientists and naturalists that had fallen in action was most moving as it showed how much experience and knowledge that we lost just from one small sliver of society. The war that had taken so many of the fit and able men showed that they still had their humanity.

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Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir by Chris Packham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Chris Packham is a well known presence on our TV screens, presenting The Really Wild Show from 1986 to 1995 and most recently Springwatch. He is passionate about all things wildlife and conservation, an interest that stemmed from early in his childhood where he developed a fascination with all creatures great, small, dead and alive. His introverted personality meant that he was a boy who didn’t fit in with anyone else at school; he was bullied, beaten up and suffered in some way every day. He was an indifferent pupil, but with the subjects he loved, he excelled at them.

Where Packham felt most alive though was when he was interacting with the natural world. He felt a connection to every creature that was living and had a fascination with those long departed like dinosaurs. His bedroom was a cross between a zoo and a museum with jam jars full of frog spawn, snakes in fish tanks and drawers full of skulls, eggs and deceased insects. He would spend hours outside looking for specimens, poring over his collections and boiling carcases to get to the bones. But the creature he most coveted was a kestrel, a real live kestrel, and one day he was to realise that dream. Every magical moment that he spent with the bird learning how to train it and observing it in the tiniest detail was to be the time he finally felt at peace with the world around him.

This moving memoir is written with an intensity that is so very different to anything that I have read before. Packham is eloquent with an attention to detail that is quite astonishing, you could say that obsession is his middle name, but it is not surprising when you learn he suffers from Asperger’s. His parents were gracious and tolerant with the way that he saw the world and the way that it saw him, but the way people failed to understand him did intensify the internal conflicts he suffered from. Woven in are accounts of his meetings with a phycologist, where he takes the tentative, painful steps of opening up to a stranger and it is where we learn of his greatest fears and those moments where he has stood at the abyss. If there was one flaw for me, it was the way it was written in the third person. It felt like he was detached from the events going on, and to a certain extent he probably was, but overall it is a really good read.

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An Estate Car Named Desire: A Life on the Road by Martin Gurdon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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

Unless you are really unfortunate, your car today will almost certainly start first time, be warm, dry and traffic allowing, you will make it to your destination with no dramas. However, motoring in the 1960’s when Martin Gurdon was growing up, was an adventure in itself. Cars could frequently be seen by the side of the road with the bonnets raised and steam coming out; it was not uncommon to take a full toolset and a spare gearbox, just in case… Gurdon’s fascination with all things with wheels was borderline obsession, he could tell the just from the note of the exhaust, what car was passing, by reading every detail in magazines he could glance at a car and tell just how rare it was. This just seemed normal, surely everyone was like this; weren’t they?

Then his happy childhood broke down; his mother’s illness caused a family crisis and he was dispatched to her sister in Lancashire. His new school tolerated him, but his father made the decision to bring him down closer to home and placed him in a vegetarian boarding school. So begins the final five years of his flawed education, an experience that he tolerated because of his continued obsession with cars, and the thrill of acquiring a Triumph Herald for illicit trips out. Stumbling out of school with no idea what he wanted to do, he ends up in a couple of dead end jobs, frequently visiting the job centre before slowly realising that writing might be something he could do, and if he could write about cars, that would be just about perfect.

Gurdon is his capacity as a motoring journalist has had the privilege of driving some of the world fastest cars, but he served his motoring apprenticeship in the appalling cars that were produced in the seventies, Reliant Robins, Morris Marinas, 2CVs; he is lucky to be alive after reading about some of the scrapes that he got into. Nostalgia seeps from this book like oil from a leaking head gasket and whilst Gurdon acknowledges that some of the cars he owned were dreadful, we see others through the rose-tinted windscreen, in particular his fond memories of his father’s Bristol 401, a car he loved so much, he bought one of his own. There are several laugh out loud parts in this book and a few of what my eldest would call ‘facepalm’ moments. Good stuff and an ideal book for your friendly petrol head.

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Wild Kingdom: Bringing Back Britain’s Wildlife by Stephen Moss
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ever since William Blake wrote the words ‘Englands green & pleasant Land’ in 1804 it has always been considered one of the best descriptions of the British countryside. For millennia humans have been changing the landscape in this country and the wildlife co-existed with us and the habitats that were formed. Now days only green could be considered correct; decades of industrial farming has wreaked untold devastation amongst the wild creatures and flowers that had once made our countryside so pleasant. Headlines scream at us from the papers about how our native wildlife is in trouble and the facts about what has been happening are frankly terrifying.

In amongst the grim news, there have been some success stories, species have been dragged back from the very brink of extinction or have been part of successful introduction programmes; these should be celebrated for good reason. But while we have been concentrating on the rare and the spectacular, our once common animals, house sparrows and the hedgehog and others have suffered catastrophic falls in numbers. Moss decides to find out for himself just what the state of our nation’s wildlife is. Starting with what is the largest land area in our country, farmlands, we go on a whistle-stop tour through our woods, seashores, and mountains. As wildlife is as much a part of the urban jungle nowadays, especially with the fox living off the waste that humans leave behind and peregrines hurling themselves from skyscrapers in the very centre of our capital.

The countryside is being exploited by self-appointed, minority-interest pressure groups whose claims to be the guardians of the countryside would be amusing, were the consequences not so serious.

This is another superb book from Moss, but more importantly is it timely too. The state of the wildlife in the country is at a tipping point after decades of pummelling from chemicals and dramatic loss of habitat. There have been some reintroductions of natives like beavers and the cleaning up of the rivers has seen the spectacular return of the otter that can be claimed as successes and there have been places where farmers and landowners have taken it upon themselves to re-wild the land which have proved successful. The points that he is fairly forcefully making are being echoed elsewhere too, most recently in Bee Quest by Dave Goulson and The Running Hare by John Lewis-Stempel, guys with their pulse of the countryside. This is a book to read if you care about the very future of our countryside and more importantly this should be a book that all politicians should be made to read.

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The Swordfish and the Star: Life on Cornwall’s Most Treacherous Stretch of Coast by Gavin Knight
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Cornwall is one a popular holiday destination for those wishing to stay in the UK. The coves and beaches are beautiful, the land and seascapes are breath-taking and being in the far west of the country, can claim to have some of the best sunsets going and is full of cosy cottages and quaint fishing villages. Where the land ends the Atlantic Ocean starts, bringing in the warmth of the Gulf Stream, it makes Cornwall’s quite balmy at times. It can though be at the receiving end of the might that all the ocean can throw at it, as winter storms sweep in pummelling the coast and cliffs.

There is still a fiercely independent local population who are doing their absolute best to ensure that they can still live in their county even though it has one of the highest second home ownership levels in the country, forcing house prices through the roof. Knight introduces us to the rich and varied characters that populate this place. We hear about the fisherman who battle against the seas month in month out, frequently putting their lives at risk to earn an income. They don’t always return. Those that do then have to battle the bureaucratic tangle that is the fisheries quotas and the families that dominate the markets. They guys who do this tough high-risk job day in and day out fight their own battles with drink and drugs as a coping mechanism. Artists have always been drawn to Cornwall s elemental coast, the quality of the light and the isolation that gave them the tools to focus on their work. Thankfully with broadband now there is a growing community of digital animators keeping the traditions alive.

Knight has written an honest and frank book peering behind the pasty’s and cream teas and surfboards to get under the skin of the county. It is one of the UK’s deprived areas, that most of the time couldn’t give a monkies about the rest of the UK, let alone Europe. He is not afraid to mix with the inhabitants chasing the snippets heard in the Swordfish and the Star pubs until he has a coherent story to tell us. Some of these stories of the rough justice and dangerous moments will scare you and captivate you.

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The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times by Xan Brooks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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

It is five years since the Great War finished and the country is still shattered. Casualties from the war abound, and some of who have suffered the most are sheltering in Epping Forest. Lucy Marsh and her brother Tom have been orphaned and live with their grandparents in a struggling pub in the grimy streets of north London. As money is tight, they have been despatched to Grantwood House, home of Lord Hertford where men from the war are convalescing. But there are four of these ‘funny men’ who have suffered horrific injuries have called themselves after characters from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, Toto and the Lion. Each week Lucy and Winifred climb into an old army lorry to go and see these men, to offer them comfort and companionship.

Circumstances mean that those visits stop and Lucy and the others end up spending lots more time on the estate and come into increased contact with the repulsive Rupert, son of Lord Hertford. He has drawn in a large number of oddballs and outcasts and proceeds to ply them with increasing amounts of cocaine, the drug of the future supposedly… But that future might already be starting to unravel for Lucy.

I loved the title of the book, which was the thing that drew me to it originally. Drawing on the deepest elements of folklore and the forest, Brooks has written a book cannot be called comforting at all. The writing is not fast paced and it borders on the surreal at times, full of subtle euphemisms as the dark plot is revealed little by little. However, it is compelling. If it has one flaw, it took a while to get going as Brooks has lots of characters to place in the story, but once I was there I read this in just a couple of days. A great debut novel and one that rewards you for sticking with it.

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