5 out of 5 stars

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

We have accumulated the knowledge and power to be able to shape the very surface of this planet to our will. We have changed almost every square kilometre of the land surface either directly or affected it in some way or another.

We are masters of this planet, or at least we like to think we are.

Our rate of expansion has been immense. Around 50,000 years ago there were a few thousand humans and now we are about to go past eight billion. We have had such an effect on the planet that we have created our own epoch, the Anthropocene. We make up just over 30% of the entire biomass of the planet and consume its resources at ever rapid rates.

The way that things are changing with the havoc that we are causing means that lots of species are suffering from declines in numbers, sometimes drastically and in some cases going extinct. As these life forms disappear, that has a huge knock-on effect as everything is interconnected. And as it turns out not even we human beings can adapt at the pace that we are changing the planet. Places that we have once been able to live in are now becoming uninhabitable and there is the worrying rise of variability; where there is not a steady change in a particular direction, rather there are extremes that are much more difficult to cope with.

Using various examples he explains how our enormous footprint on the planet is affecting everything in ways that we cannot foresee, how species are being isolated and are changing and also how the simple use of a wildlife corridor can have great benefits. As humanity has moved around the planet we have taken our crops with us and adapted them to the new locale so we have brought with us numerous pathogens. Most of them have been harmless until now, but Dunn gives several examples where this is changing.

He explores how our current monoculture of food production may cause problems, what we need is diversity now to be able to cope with the dramatic changes that are starting to happen. The lack of diversity in the species will also cause problems and he goes into some detail on our dependence on the microbes that live in and on us and mostly keep us healthy and how a simple medical procedure is having an effect of the way that these are passed on between mother and child.

Even though this could be pretty gloomy at times and occasionally terrifying, I thought that it was excellent overall. Dunn knows his subject well and more importantly manages to get across all the salient points in a clear and concise manner. I felt that I was learning something on almost every page. He doesn’t go into much detail on how we can fix these problems, though to be fair that is an entire book in its own right. Rather he wants to present the problems and hope that we can work together to solve them. Essential reading I think.

3.5 out of 5 stars

I have never been to any of these countries yet, however, when I think of Scandinavian countries a have a list of things that come to mind. Danish bacon, ABBA, Ikea, Saab, ultra-cool F1 drivers Viking and Nokia to name a few. The traits of the people that live there come across as relaxed and their societies seem to be the type that looks after the whole rather than the few.

But what are they actually like? I genuinely have no idea, but Michael Booth intends to bring some insights to their national characters in this book. Even though he is English, he has an advantage as he is married to a Danish lady and is resident in the country with her and their family. In this book, he is intending on finding out more about the different nations and seeing if there really like each other.

He begins in Denmark, of course, and set about trying to understand just what makes them tick, what the hell hygge actually is. As he lives there he has more insight into this country’s funny little ways, mostly because he has adopted them himself. There is an interlude as he heads to Iceland, which bemused me as to why it was in the book, as it is strictly not Scandinavia at the moment. Perhaps he should have gone to Greenland, which is at least owned by Denmark.

Each of the countries has a chapter on it and whilst some of the questions he sets about answering in the book are very light-hearted, he does ask some searching questions of some of the people that he meets. He questions politicians about the protective cultures that have a growing proportion of people who are supporting right-wing parties and have citizens who are asking questions about the number of immigrants. Then he is trying to provoke others into reacting as he decides to ignore all social norms in a city centre.

I liked this overall, but I did have a couple of issues with it. Firstly, it became a little bit repetitive at times, similar themes would appear in each chapter for each country. Secondly, it did feel a little bit contrived, rather than him being honest about his feelings for each of the nations he did follow the national tropes that they all have with each other. His prose is quite engaging though and there are quite a few laugh-out-loud moments in the books; I learnt that Ikea names its doormats after Danish towns for example. If you are expecting an in-depth study of each culture then you might need to look elsewhere for more understanding of each of the cultures

4 out of 5 stars

The Pacific is a vast ocean and I mean vast. When seen from space as the Earth rotates it takes us one complete half of the globe. It is 12,000 by 10,00 miles and all the landmasses on the earth can fit inside this area with still room for a second set of the American Continents. From space, it looks empty, just endless waves and swell and the ocean ebbs and flows with the tides.

But f you were to zoom in then suddenly specks of land appear in the blue. There are around 10,000 islands in this ocean. When the European explorers arrived several hundred years ago they often missed them. You can see why, because at sea level you would be hard pushed to see them unless you knew where to look. Or more importantly, knew how to find them in the endless water. Even in the modern age, these three regions of islands, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia can be troublesome to navigate.

There have been people here living on these tiny dots of sand for a thousand years. They can trace their roots back to a group of voyagers who set out into the unknown ocean. This book is their story.

Thompson is well placed to write this, she is married to a Maori and him and his sons can trace their lineage directly back to these people. As they spread over the islands they developed their own societies, culture and folklore as well as learning how to read the waves and the swell and use the night sky to move between the island showed them where the next land was. It was something that the Europeans could not do, they would either miss them or come across them by accident.

The vessels that they used to get between the islands were specially designed for the sea journeys and were easy to make with the scarce resources that they had. She goes back through their history tracing their expansion across the ocean and they are chapters on how people tried to work out how they could be such successful navigators. They didn’t have metals and it was only relatively recently there it was discovered that they did have pottery when sites were excavated.

I thought that this was a fascinating book about a place that I knew almost nothing of before reading it. Her prose is sensitively written and well researched and the facts and details she reveals are fascinating. The people that populated the Pacific have a fairly unique set of skills when it comes to navigation across this vast ocean and Thompson teases out the details of the way that they manage it. If you want to learn more about how humanity is capable of adapting to the challenges that the planet throughs at it then I would suggest reading this book.

5 out of 5 stars

If I had enough land I would plant an orchard. Sadly I haven’t got that opportunity so I have to make do with visiting the few community orchards every now and again. The one tucked away behind the church in Bridport is one of my favourites. I knew they could be a haven for wildlife, but having read this book, I think that the diversity and range of habitats that they offer is second to none.

This particular orchard that is the subject of the book is quite special. To start with it hasn’t been grubbed up to satisfy the whim of some anonymous civil servant who needs for complete form of some kind, nor has it been touched by chemicals. Sadly they keep its location secret as it is a private orchard as I would love to be able to visit. Instead, they become our eyes and ears looking at the wildlife that inhabit the fruit trees.

The owners of the land do maintain it, but they are happy to leave fallen branches to rot down providing many more habitats for the vast numbers of species that can be found here. With the abundance of insects in the orchard, come their predators and the orchard is full of numerous species of birds, who have plenty of place to nest because of the light touch management of the orchard by the owners. With an abundance of birds come the raptors and this orchard is rich in those too.

I thought was an excellent book. Not only is it packed full of the tiniest details of the life that inhabits this very special orchard, but it is really well written by both the authors. Their writing is evocative and they are happy to share their extensive knowledge with the reader. But most of all it is an inspirational book about how we can use the orchards we have to give wildlife the urgent helping hand it needs in this climate emergency.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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

We are fortunate that just north of us we have a designated dark skies area, Cranborne Chase where there is so little artificial light that the magnificent spectacle that is the night sky can be seen in all its glory. But knowing what each of those pinpricks of light is many lifetimes work for scientists and astronomers.

For the layperson, though it can be a bit overwhelming. The distances between each of the stars are mind-bogglingly large. I still can get my head around some of the numbers quoted from us to our nearest neighbouring star, Proxima Centauri. It is four light-years away and you can’t even see it unless you have a telescope!

To help find your way through the vastness of space, Andrew Newsam, Professor of Astronomy Education and Engagement has written this guide for those that want to know a little bit more about the heavens. He has split the book into five sections, a brief history of observation of the stars and planets, a chapter on the sun, the star that gives us heat and light and the solar system. He then moves onto other stars and then galaxies, before ending with a chapter going right back to the very beginnings of the universe when the big bang happened.

As an introduction to the sun, planets and stars that we can see from our pale blue dot, this is a great way of finding out a little bit more about them. Newsam writes in a way that is not too technical but is drawing on his experience as a Professor in the subject. If you are looking for more detail there are other books out there that will fill in the gaps. The only thing that I thought it was missing was a further reading section for those that want to use this as a stepping stone for more information about the particular astronomy subject that fascinates them.

3.5 out of 5 stars

As Terry Pratchett said, “Imagination, not intelligence, made us human” and we as a species have been telling stories for thousands of years. And until the advent of paper, these were an oral tradition, told between individuals who passed them on in turn. The stories that have come to make our own mythology have in their own way defined who we are now to an extent. In those stories, you can find dragons, giants and other creatures that have not walked these lands in millennia.

The stores that Jeffs has chosen to make up this collection have been split into four chunks, In the Beginning, where she retells the story of how Albion got its name from and the naming of the Humber and the Severn. In the prehistory section, some of the selected stories include how Conwenna saved Britain and the Dragons that Lived Under Oxford. Merlin and Arthur feature heavily in the Antiquity section and the stories in the Middle Ages section bring us right up to the Norman invasion.

I mostly liked this retelling of the myths and folklore that permeate our history. It is beautifully illustrated, and I liked that the stories had been updated to a modern language. That said, I did have a couple of problems with it, even though the stories are written in a modern language Jeffs has taken the liberty to alter some of them subtly too. I personally don’t think that this is necessary as the original stories as we know then are strange and occasionally defy explanation for a reason. The second reason was that after each story was a little vignette of her visiting the place where the events were supposed to have taken place and they felt a bit bolted on. I would have preferred them to be as part of the introduction or afterword to each chapter.

4 out of 5 stars

Unsure whether to buy a home in Norfolk, what swung it for him was the song from a Cetti’s Warbler that he heard as he stood outside the front door. Outside the back door was a patch of marshland that they wanted to make a conservation area and his wife’s careful negotiations meant that they had a home and patch of land that would not be lost to development.

They had an opportunity to buy the land from their next-door neighbour, Barry and worked with the Norfolk Wildlife Trust to ensure that it became appealing to all manner of species. He isn’t really rewilding it, just letting it get on with life and death in all its rich forms and taking time to enjoy it. For their youngest son Eddie who has Down’s syndrome, it became a place of calm, a place where he could ask any question about what he saw around him when they walked out to their bench.

Set loosely over a year, this is a book that acknowledges time passing, and yet the writing makes it feel timeless. There are moments of sheer delight, when he looks out of the window and sees a marsh harrier passing over or the hare that makes the place his home. There are times he gets furious too, not at what he has but at the way we are discarding parts of the natural world without a care for out interdependent futures. There were some great moments too, like when he opens the moth trap, a birthday gift from his wife, both him and Eddie are hooked

What you see is great, but the greater thing is being out there. Not what you look at but what you’re part of. And that is the greatest gift the marsh brings to us. We’re not the audience, we’re participants.

I thought this was really good. I liked that whilst there was participation from his family in the book, they did not overpower the narrative, the marsh and all the life that inhabits it or passes over is the focus. The other participant in the book is his son Eddie and the way that he reacts to the natural world. If you are looking for personal angst in amongst nature, then this is not the book to find it in, rather this is a more mediative book, celebrating the tiny things that happen each and every day as he looks out the window, or sits on the bench with Eddie, drinking apple juice and beer enjoying the evening sun. It is a book to savour and enjoy.

4 out of 5 stars

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

It has been a long time since I have read any fairy tales to my children, or even to myself even. I even remember reading the classic stories way way back in my childhood too. These stories are still heard and seen regularly today, they can be seen in the pantos that follow the Christmas season and the plethora of animated movies (that I must admit I haven’t seen hardly any of)

These modern retellings of the fairy tales are often a more sanitised version of these are sometimes brutal stories. Probably the most famous names associated with these tales are the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, But some of the other famous stories were collected by people whose names are not as well known. I didn’t know the authors of the famous tales Hansell and Gretel and all of the Arabian Nights stories. Tracing the origins of them will take Jubber across the northern climes and then heading through the Black Forest, onto Southern Europe before arriving in the Middle East.

Each of the chapters begins with the story which we are going to learn about. Most of them I knew, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, but there are others in here that I had not come across before, such as The Tale of All Kinds of Fur and The Tale of the Firebird. We are taken through the known history behind them and how they came to be known to a wilder world.

I thought that Jubber has written a fascinating book, his prose is engaging and you can tell that he is obviously still captivated by the stories even today. He even manages to persuade his teenage friends to go to an animated film at the Bournemouth cinema one day rather than watch an action film. He tells captivating stories on how these came to be wider known in global culture and the little know background about the people that found these stories. If you have a thing for fairy tales and have always wondered where they came from this is a good book to start with. It has also made me want to reread the fairy tales of my childhood too.

4 out of 5 stars

Sri Lanka is a pearl-shaped island just off the southern Indian coast. Traces of human life have been found going back thousands of years, and it abounds with legends from its past. The island is rich in wildlife and forest too and even has its own subspecies of the Asian elephant. They were part of the commonwealth until 1948 when they declared independence and they have had a troubled history since that point with pretty much civil war between the Sinhalese and Tamil populations.

Close to where Gimlette lives in London is a community of Tamil’s. It is thought that there are around 8000 of them, but nobody knows for certain, This is a small proportion of the number in the UK and they are a people that are fairly self-contained. Their temple looks like an art deco department store, but inside it was like stepping into Sri Lankan. He knew then it was a place that he would have to see for himself.

On arrival in Columbo, he stopped to as a man the direction to go, who by chance happened to be heading in that direction. They were soon in a three-wheeler in the chaotic traffic heading towards the temple, Gangarama. It was slowly dawning on him that something was going on and he asked to go back. They took him and asked for a huge fee for his experience, which after a few minutes of sitting around was negotiated down substantially. The first few weeks in the city, he walked everywhere though navigating was challenging as their beautiful script was incomprehensible to him. After a few weeks, it was time to leave the city and head out into the countryside.

At that point, the fireflies appeared, filling the treehouse with their twinkly light. It was like being in the cockpit of a tiny thatched jet.

Being driven was an experience, they have a very different set of safety parameters and the rules of the road are more fiction than law. The road took them to the coast, where the sea glinted its amethyst colour in the sun. Inland the landscape became harsher and drier and he saw his first signs warning about elephants. They stop and climb a small hill and there in front of them were hundreds of silvery wewas. These water channels are not natural, they are a massive civil engineering feat to bring water across the island to irrigate the land.

In places, everything had been scorched away, and pools of crimson had formed in the hollows. The thorn tresses looked as if they’d been added later in ink, they were so spare and black.

His travels take him all over the island and to some of the little islands off the coast and in each place he finds out more and more about the people and the conflict that caused so much anguish. He learns how they live with some of the horrific things that the various sides inflicted on each other and sifts through their complex and long history, finding out how they have lived under various European authorities.

Gimlette has a sharp eye for detail and a way of travelling that does not presume anything. Rather he finds interesting places to go and he waits for things to happen and then tells us about them and the people that he meets there. I am a big fan of the other books that Gimlette has written, in particular, his award-winning Wild Coast and the most recently published, The Gardens Of Mars. However, I didn’t quite connect with this one as much as those other two. I think that it was because there was a lot about the civil war in the book and it felt more like a history book rather than a travel book. I thought that it was still worth reading, though as he has a wonderful way with words. There are a few pictures from his trip in the book, but there are more here.