4.5 out of 5 stars

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

Commuting by train is no fun, I did it for a little while before a friend got a car and then we could get where we wanted and when. I always regret never taking the time when younger to go interrailing, sadly circumstances never allowed me the time to do that. Until recently it is something that had never crossed my mind to do, but reading this book has made me think that it could still be possible.

Slow Trains Around Spain is a fairly self-explanatory title, and in this book, Tom Chesshyre wants to discover a Spain that most people never come across when they visit that country. But first, he has to get there, and rather than fly, he arrives at St Pancras to catch the Eurostar to Gard du Nord in Paris. He crosses Paris to catch the sleeper to Spain. It is an uneventful journey and he first glimpses the country after emerging from a long tunnel in the town of Figueres. There is sort of a plan, he wants to travel around the country taking the slowest trains possible between the provincial towns of Spain is a lazy and badly drawn S.

The sense of Spain being in some way cut off and removed is quite strong here. Yes, Spain is part of mainland Europe, but it feels quite apart too. You get that straight away after crossing the Pyrenees.

Each of the chapters takes us with him on the route that he followed around the country and this book is as much of a cultural tour as it is a geographic one. There are hundreds of mini-stories and vignettes in here about the people that he meets either on the train journeys or who he talks to in the places he stops at. Woven into this modern-day narrative are the histories of the places, from the tragedies of the country under Franco to the structures built by the Romans that are still standing 2000 years later and the Moorish influence that still resonates in the architecture of Southern Spain.

Spain by train seems to reward the lazy traveller – the more ad hoc you make it, the more you lose your way, the more the country unravels before you, revealing itself.

I thought that this was a wonderful book to read. He has a wonderful way with words and it goes to prove that you don’t need to travel to extreme places to have a wonderful journey and make memories. One gauge of a good travel book is, does it make me want to recreate a similar journey and discover that part of the world for myself and the answer, in this case, is yes. Very much worth reading.

4 out of 5 stars

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

There has been a lot of talk in the publishing world recently of underrepresented authors. If you haven’t been fortunate to go to the right universities or know the right people then getting the words you have written between the covers of a book can be an uphill struggle.

In this crowdfunded collection, Inkandescant has given thirty authors the opportunity for their voices to be heard. There are authors who bring lots of life experience to the page, working-class writers whose perspective is not heard often enough. They have also selected queer scribes and people of colour who all have stories to tell. Some of these have had their words published elsewhere and some are seeing their name for the first time in print in a book.

Ass with any collection that I read, I can’t say that I loved every story equally.  What everyone likes is deeply personal and I am the same. I did have three that I thought were outstanding though, The Birdwatchers, The Reluctant Bride and A Life That Isn’t Mine To See. What I would like to see though are these authors that have appeared for the first time have the chance to write longer pieces in other publishers as their voices are just as relevant as everyone else.

4 out of 5 stars

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

I always look for the red dot that is Mars in the sky when it is clear. It seems quite peaceful there, so why it ever became the God of War in the Roman Empire is a bit of a mystery to me. Even though it looks peaceful now it had an equally tumultuous beginning as Earth did during its formation.

There is a renewed interest in the planet too, there have been a number of probes sent on missions to the planet, some of which have been successful and sent back gigabytes of useful data and pictures; there have been others that have just become the latest crater on this lifeless planet…

It was formed 4.5 billion years ago, and how it came to be is the subject of many studies at the moment. Reading the Marscapes and geology is the remits of a few people, one of whom is Simon Morden, a planetary geologist. In this fascinating book, he will take us through the known stages of the planet and how it got to where it is today.

Some facts can be determined from the photos and data that have come back from the probes that are on the planet and he expands in some detail of each of the ages that it went through and explains the current theories and known facts. There are some points though where the evidence they have collected is not as clear cut and he takes time to explain each theory and the reason why scientists have reached their conclusions. These are things that can only be checked by getting evidence from those specific regions.

I thought this was a well-written book about our neighbouring planet by an expert planetary geologist with a knack for telling a story. Occasionally it felt like it was getting a bit technical, but thankfully it didn’t veer into the opaque world of academia too much. If you want to know about Mars and the unique and peculiar traits behind its creation then this is a very good place to start.

3 out of 5 stars

I don’t know what it is about islands, but there is something quite special about being on one. It is a fascination that Gavin Francis shares too, and he has been lucky enough to spend thirty years of his life travelling to some of the best islands on this planet, including the Andaman Islands, the Faroe Islands and even the Galapagos.

Most of these travels were because of his work as a doctor. But the book looks at lots of other writers experiences of islands as well as the use that islands have been put to over the years, for example for prisons, leper colonies and for pilgrimages.

This is a beautifully laid out book, full of wonderful maps of islands that Francis has been too, or he has lived on. It feels like a large print book as the text is a larger font and well-spaced. However, the maps are sometimes too small to read any detail from. The prose is well written, but it is a thin veneer of detail about his life travelling to these marvellous places. It is a shame really as it could have been so much better.

4 out of 5 stars

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

As we stumble into the Anthropocene, we humans are in the process of making numerous plants and animals extinct. Some of these we know are happening, the western black rhino is now gone forever and the northern white rhino has only got two females left; the last male dies in 2018. Just in the UK alone, there are 67 birds on the red list.

Knowing that these are threatened is bad enough, but it is more poignant when you can see photos of the animals that have vanished in the past century or so. In this book, Fuller has found photographs of 28 different species that we will never see again in the wild. Of the 28 there are a lot of birds that we have photos of including the Laughing Owl, the pink-headed duck, the Imperial Woodpecker and what was once the most numerous bird on the planet, the passenger pigeon. There are a few mammals included too, the greater short-tailed bat is quite a beauty and there are lots of pictures of the Thylacine, the carnivorous marsupial from Tasmania. While this is thought to be extinct, there have been recent reports of sightings again.

I can’t really say that I liked this book, as the subject matter is too tragic. However, it is well written and researched and I thought that Fuller has put together a book that is worth reading for its historical context. It should also be read as a warning for humanity about just how easy it is to lose some of the unique and wonderful creatures that we have on this planet.

4 out of 5 stars

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

How can somewhere that you have never visited feel like home immediately? It can and it does. For Pamela Petro, this happened the first time that she visited Wales to study for a Master’s Degree at a university English Department. She knew almost nothing about the place or the country or its particular and unique history, culture and especially its language. But she felt at home in this place. On returning to America, her family there wondered if the infatuation with Wales would fade over time.

It didn’t.

The was her first physical experience of the Welsh word, hiraeth. She had discovered it before when looking at a bilingual poster, on the English section the word was repeated in italics and she asked her friend, Andy why it hadn’t been translated. He replied saying that it couldn’t be translated. It would be a while before she would come to know the meaning herself, even though she had come across the inadequate ‘homesickness’ as an explanation. A close definition, if you could call it that, is the sense of being out of one’s home place.

The longer she was away, the greater the longing to be back there.

This multi-layered memoir is her exploration of her inner self and the feelings she has towards what has become her adopted country. But there is much more to this than just Wales, it is also about her parents, the train accident that nearly killed her, of her sexuality and long term partner, Marguerite, her teaching and her writing and travels for her book on the Welsh language. But this is mostly about Wales, how the people and their outlook have helped define who she is, the inevitable rain and relishing a sunny day and driving the slow and twisting roads to the coast.

She has a wonderful way with words in this book, managing to capture perfectly that first time that she knew that the landscape, people and language of Wales had for some reason always had a place in her heart. Even though the elusive meaning of hiraeth is very difficult to explain, what Petro does with this book is to tease out the multiple threads of meaning that this word has for her and how she has always sought it on her many trips to Wales. I am not sure I can explain it either, but I know when we moved from Surrey to Dorset, I felt a connection to this place that I didn’t have in Surrey. The is the first of Petro’s books that I have read, even though I have had Travels in An Old Tongue on my bookshelves at home for quite a while I have never got to read it. I am going to have to rectify that soon.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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

There are lots of Second World War based history books that remember the heroism, battles and losses of the Second World War, just walk into any bookshop and you can pick from subjects as diverse as spies, naval battles, the D Day landings and so it goes on. There is very little around on those people that took the moral high ground and decided that they would not or could not fight. This book concerns a group of pacifists who in 1943 took possession of a vacant farm in Frating, a hamlet on the Essex Tendring Peninsula and it was here that they set about making a community farm.

Their inspiration was a number of writers who were associated with the Adelphi Journal such as Orwell and Lawrence who were thinking about radical ideas for society. It became a livelihood for individuals and families who wanted to do something different and came to support and help other refugees and even some prisoners of war. It was hard work, but it did manage to earn the respect of other farms in the area with its successes in arable and livestock farming.

Worpole tells how it began with a small community of 30 people, but by the time it had got to 1948, there were considerably more people living there and numbers swelled at harvest time too. It was never a utopia though, the work was hard and relentless and there always seemed to be some conflicting opinions between some of the main people on the farm in the book. The children who lived on the farm all seems to go on to do a whole variety of careers in educational or artistic positions. The farm was making a profit by the end of its tenure, but they still had to service its debt and those obligations meant the end of the venture.

I thought that this was a fascinating insight into a part of society in World War 2 that is very rarely written about. The research is meticulous and there are lots of photos of the people that are in the book as well as some of the activities that took place on the farm. I thought that Worpole has managed to make this a useful historical reference document as well as a series of personal stories about some of the characters that were at the farm. If you like history books with a different spin then this is well worth reading.

2.5 out of 5 stars

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

It is amazing to think that diamonds are made from the same stuff that you use on a barbeque. One is a black crumbly material that is utterly opaque, the other is a sparkling clear gemstone that allows rays of light to pass through while the internal structure reflects, refracts and disperses that light helping them shine brilliantly. Not only are they both forms of carbon, but they do both burn…

The majority of diamonds in the world have come out of Southern Africa and since 1888 it has been controlled by the global monopoly that is De Beers. They have controlled the market by limiting the availability of diamonds, buying up excess stock, flooding the market to reduce prices and damaging competitors as well as other methods of price-fixing.

They are not particularly great to their employees either, not only do they work in some pretty tough conditions and the company takes vast personal liberties to ensure that they are not stealing any of the product, but they only pay them the minuscule amount of 0.00019% of the final sale value of the precious stone that they have found. No wonder the methods of smuggling rough diamonds from the areas and novel and original, from sockets at the rear of false eyes, inserting them in various parts of the anatomy and by using homing pigeons.

It is the pigeons that are the lead-in story that is threaded about the book, he first meets with someone who he calls Msizi and his bird called Bartholomew. This pigeon is Msizi’s opportunity to smuggle diamonds from the mines to his home and bring a little hope to him and his family. Like with all of the methods that the smugglers use, the company comes down very hard of those that seek to steal from them and the policy is to shoot any birds they see.

This lead is the beginning to, Frank finding out more about just how the company operates, and he speaks to oppressed workers to some of the armed heavies that patrols the company lands. What he really wants to do though is meet the almost mythical Mr Lester, the all-seeing and all-knowing De Beers executive whose reputation is legendary among smugglers and company men alike.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I thought that parts of it were really well written, atmospheric and occasionally terrifying. I didn’t think that his personal story should have been in there. It felt like it was added to add the ‘personal interest’ element that editors feel should be there. There was enough in the stories that he did pick up on though to have a still made it a decent book. To begin with, it feels like the criminals are the smugglers who are trying to make a little more money for themselves and their families. But it ends up with the company looking like the real criminals in the end.

3 out of 5 stars

The town of Rotherweird is an anomaly. It is independent from England and has been so for the past four hundred years all to protect a secret. The last man who tried to exploit that secret, Sir Veronal Slickstone is now dead. As Rotherweird tries to return to normal, or as normal as they can get in this strange town.

But things start to happen and people become aware of omens that are disturbing. A warning is delivered at a funeral the Herald disappears and the covenant between town and countryside is under threat by democracy, of all things. The mayoral election has galvanised the population, but it is setting different factions against each other. As this is unfolding sinister things are happening in the background, Geryon Wynter, a man that everyone thought was buried in their dark Elizabethan past has been planning something over the past centuries. No one can really see exactly what is happening, but the approach of the Solstice may be the key.

Overall I thought this was fairly good. The plot is moderately paced, full of subtle clues and scenes that build towards the end as all the threads come together. Like with the first book, I thought that the mini world, Rotherweird, that he has constructed is unnerving and familiar at the same time. I like the use of magic and 16th-century tech that he mixes in with it too. One flaw for me was the number of characters that swirl through the plot, it felt like there were too many and it always took a moment to try to work out quite what was going on each time. I will be reading the last book in the series though, as I want to see how it ends.

4 out of 5 stars

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

He is used to some of the more exotic regions of the planet but a commission is a commission and he agrees to take on the filming of a pair of Goshawks in the place that he remembers from a childhood growing up in Ringwood on the edge of the New Forest. He meets up with one of the rangers who takes him to the locations where he knows they are nesting. The first is the best with regards to location, but there are no birds around. They spend longer looking at the other sites but have no luck. A hunch takes them back to the original one and there on the nest is a female. He has found his pair.

There is a sublime chaos about ancient woodland that speaks of perfect natural balance, and for me, such places nourish the soul like no other environment.

Just as he is preparing the site the lockdown is announced in March 2020. It looks like he won’t be filming them anytime soon, but a few weeks into the lockdown he gets the permissions that he needs to undertake the filming. HE is in the forest at a time when it feels like the world has stopped. Gone is the constant rumble of traffic across the A31, the skies are silent and empty as nothing is flying out of Southampton and Bournemouth. There is just him and this pair of Goshawks.

So begins a spring and summer of studying these birds in perfect peace, as well as the pain and pleasure of climbing 50 feet up in the air to sit in a cramped hide all day to film a pair of Goshawks. He managed to get 400 hours of filming in the end. But there is much more to that book than this. He takes time away from the Goshawks to see Curlews, a much-endangered species as well as filming a family of fox cubs in a ditch near where their earth is.

For most, the tangled web of a forest canopy is a dangerous, impenetrable barrier. Even a peregrine wouldn’t enter it at speed. Yet – as we have come to see – goshawks aren’t like other birds.

As the restrictions are slowly lifted after the first lockdown the people return to the New Forest. Then as restrictions are eased again the forest fills with cars and people. They are taking their lockdown frustrations out on the place and leave litter, block roads and driveways and generally get angry anyone for no apparent reason. He worries that the noise will cause the Goshawks to abandon the nest, but they are more of stronger stuff, they are not the alpha predator for no reason at all. He carries on the filming, watching the chicks consume vast quantities of small birds and mammals.

There is much more depth to this book than just the diary of his filming. It is also the story of a thousand-year-old forest during one of the strangest times in our recent history, but it is a collection of thoughts on our wider relationship with the natural world and how we need to change to make it better, rather than just ruin it all the time. I did like this book a lot. It is a short book so his prose is taut and considered; there is not a wasted word here, however, he still manages to convey the brutal beauty of these fantastic birds. The diary format works really well too, it is a reminder that whatever happens in our own little worlds, the earth keeps turning and gradually changing each and every day. There was a brief eulogy to his late father, Chris, at the end of the book; he shared happy times with his father in the New Forest and lockdowns and work commitments meant that he never spent as much time with him in that last year. His life was cruelly taken too quickly by cancer at the end of 2020.