Walking through Spring: An English Journey by Graham Hoyland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Partly inspired by a memory of his father saying that spring moved at walking pace across the country and that he had missed a number of English springs whilst being stuck up some of the highest mountains in the world, Hoyland had the idea of following it as it moves up and across the country from the first day of spring on the south coast to the Scottish border a few weeks later. The warmth that the season brings turns a monotone landscape into one that is fresh, green and bursting with life.

Starting on the beautiful Dorset coast at Christchurch, Hoyland and his wife planned their route following where possible the ancient footpaths that criss-cross the countryside. He marked each mile along the paths and hawthorn hedgerows with the planting of an acorn, noting the GPS position so they could return one day to check progress. Each day that they walked brought the delights of spring to them; bluebells, animals emerging from hibernation, the arrival of the swifts and cuckoos and the way that all life blooms.

There are some amusing parts in the book, he has a knack of getting a little bit lost on a regular basis and he is not afraid to speak his mind either with forceful opinions an subjects as diverse as HS2, the perils of industrial farming and the loss of so many of the birds and animals over the years. It is packed full of interesting facts and details as he draws from nature writers, poets and artists as well as architects and engineers that have been inspired, changed and made their living from the countryside. It has a great bibliography too with lots of relevant quotes and recommendations on other books to read. Not only is this a most enjoyable stroll through the English countryside at the walking speed, I really liked that he made an effort to give something back too by planting the acorns along his route. Even though it is not as lyrical as Macfarlane and Deakin it is still well worth reading.

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The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Arthur Rowe has just got out of prison having served time for the mercy killing of his very ill wife and now living in London, mid-way through the blitz. A trip to the local fete is a welcome change from the recent trauma in his life and he wanders round the stalls. He has a go at guessing the weight of the cake, before entering a fortune tellers tent. She tells him what the correct weight of the cake is, so he enters a second time and wins it. Leaving the fete with the cake, the organisers try to stop him leaving with it, saying there has been a mistake. He refuses and takes the cake home.

So begins the most traumatic phase in Rowe’s life. The cake contains something that certain people really want back and they are prepared to go to almost any length to hunt him down and retrieve it. Even in his fragile mental state, he realises what is going on and he starts to discover just who is hunting him. Slowly he discovers more of the sinister conspiracy but he can’t go to the police as he is not totally sure of the facts or who is behind it.

Greene has put you in the character of Rowe, revealing limited details as the book unfolds and his position gets more and more perilous. It is a sparsely written book with a clever but bewildering plot. The tension from the war and the situation he finds himself in add to the drama too. I don’t think that I can count it as one of my favourites of his though, as it was a bit too convoluted, but I’d like to see the film version. 2.5 stars overall.

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The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt by Andrea Wulf
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When you think of scientists that have formed the way that we think about world around us, the names that tend to come to mind are Newton, Darwin, Wallace, Davy and Einstein. In the mid-19th Century though the most famous scientist in the world was a man called Alexander von Humboldt, a man very few people have ever heard of these days.

von Humboldt had a fascination of everything around him; he studied plants, geology, volcanos, animal and the stars the weather and the movement of the planets. Everything fascinated him and he went on major expeditions to South America and across the Russian steppe to China, and bought back detailed notebooks and trunks stuffed full of specimens and samples. He was one of the first scientists to consider the interconnectedness of all natural things, noticing that climate zones were similar on completely different continents, something that didn’t really gain traction until Lovelock’s Gaia theory and his observations led him to predict our effects on the climate decades before anyone else.

He was the author of around thirty volumes that became best sellers and were translated into multiple languages. His lyrical writing not only inspired countless other scientists to further their studies, but they stimulated artists and poets to explore their own natural world. He wrote and recived thousands of letters a year, corresponding with American presidents, like Thomas Jefferson and iconic figures Simón Bolívar. Even though he was from Prussia and was a member of King Frederick William III court, he felt his spiritual home was in the intellectual melting pot of Paris, even though he was sometimes considered an enemy by Napoleon. The King insisted he return home, much to his disappointment, but he still spent some of the year there, meeting and talking with fellow scientists.

Wulf’s book is a captivating account of the life and achievements of von Humboldt. Just a glance at the comprehensive notes you can see it has taken an immense amount of research to write this book, but it is still very readable without being dry and academic. She has successfully managed to bring to life a scientist whose influence on our understanding of the natural world can still be seen today.

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Quartz and Feldspar: Dartmoor – A British Landscape in Modern Times by Matthew Kelly
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Dartmoor is an elemental place. The largest area of granite in the country is bleak yet beautiful and on a sunny day it can really show its glorious side. But bad weather here can be a killer, fog and rain sweeping in from that Atlantic can reduce visibility in no time at all. It is one of the reasons that the army still use the area for training. It is a place that has seen human activity for millennia too, there are tombs and enclosures scattered all over the National Park as well as evidence of people using the land to scratch a living.

It is home to the Dartmoor pony, an infamous prison and has inspired writers who have used the brooding melancholy to great effect, most famously in The Hound of the Baskervilles. It first became a National park in 1951 and is made up of common land as well as substantial tracts owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, the MOD parts are owned by water companies the National Trust and the Forestry Commission. These various stakeholders have all sort of claims on the land, but the National Park Authority tries to control the various conflicting wishes.

It is not a bad book, but the emphasis is firmly looking at all the horse trading and political manoeuvring that had taken place from the formation of the park until the Dartmoor Commons Act that secured public access to the park, even on private land. I felt that there was not enough on the geology of this fascinating place and I would have preferred much more on the history on those that have used the landscape for ritual and other purposes. The political side is an element in the story of this place, but sadly it overwhelmed the book.

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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Go back 100,000 years and you would find six separate species of human scattered across the earth. Today there is a single one left; homo sapiens. In this book, Harari looks at how we rose not only to become the only Homo species but also the dominant creature on the planet. He considers how our genetic makeup is still closely tied to the original hunter-gatherer way of life and how our innovations in farming, civilisation and science have made us all powerful. Modern life has brought us many benefits but there is a darker side; we have enslaved people and wrought pain and misery on countless people throughout history and even now are slaves to the clock and consumerism.

It is a broad-brush book as Harari draws on economics, anthropology and palaeontology to complete the history of our species. He also considers our future as humans, looking at the medical advances that could mean we live longer than ever and other technologies like genetic modification that could make some of people life more comfortable. Sadly though, there are flaws. He seems to come up with some daft conclusions, there are sweeping generalisations concerning subjects like the economy whilst there is very little on our effects on the climate. It has immense amounts of detail in some subjects and then rushes through on others, but it is a good stab at a subject with so much history and offers the potential of so much more.

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Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money are Challenging the Global Economic Order by Paul Vigna
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Money supposedly makes the world go round. It doesn’t; that’s physics; but it is the lifeblood of business and the system that controls it, governments, banks, brokers and the other middlemen have made and lost fortunes with it and with that control comes power. Cryptocurrencies might be something that you have heard of, but like most people you are probably unaware how this new form of money is aiming to revolutionise the concept of money.

Bitcoin is probably the best known of these new cryptocurrencies. They are beginning to offer a genuine alternative to regular currencies, allowing people without access to credit and banks a way into global finance. This new money is a peer-to-peer type verified by technologies such as the blockchain and encryption allowing the bypassing of regular money channels. It is not subject to regular laws either, it was extensively used on the Silk Road website for illegal transactions and has gained some notoriety, however it is democratic and anyone can mine the coins to spend how they choose.

It is an interesting book about a new form of cash and whilst the authors do their best to explain it in simple and straightforward terms, it is at time very technical and complex. It is worth reading though, especially if you have an interest in technology or finance; but be prepared to be baffled at times.

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Stonehenge: The Story of a Sacred Landscape by Francis Pryor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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

Stonehenge. Just the name can conjure up that iconic image of the standing stones and sarsens against the background of the Salisbury Plain. Rightly so, it is a World Heritage site, but it is an enigma as it actual purpose can still only be speculated about. Was it a celestial calendar? Or a ritual site? Perhaps it was used for sacrifices, or used as a focus for the Neolithic peoples who built it. Whatever its purpose, we know that the area has been used for millennia as a place of significance with the first man made changes being made around 3000 BC.

Pryor is an expert in the Bronze and Iron Ages, but his particular speciality is Flag Fen, a huge site in Cambridgeshire that was used extensively for ritual purposes. Whilst he is not an expert on Stonehenge, he does have a gift for seeing the landscape as those people would have done. In this book he draws on the very latest in archaeology and research to give us a broad history of the monument, explores how a range of people have seen and used the site ove the years and considers the context of the site in the wider landscape.

Pryor’s ability to immerse himself in the age and the ability of see the landscape through their eyes, means that we get an expert view of the way that it evolved and changes, without descending into dry academic speak. As well as the rigorous writing, the book is full of excellent photos, high quality plans and beautiful pictures of Stonehenge. It is comprehensive without being complicated and well worth reading.

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