4 out of 5 stars

It wasn’t quite a eureka moment, but there came a day when Brigit Strawbridge Howard realised she knew more about the French Revolution than she did about her native trees. And birds. And wildflowers. And bees. Rather than ignore it, she made a decision to find out as much as she could about these plants, animals and invertebrates that were all around her North Dorset home.

This reconnection with the natural world moved quickly from an interest to a passion as she discovered just how fortunate she was to live where she could see all manner of things around her. One creature though became a borderline obsession, the bee. Her husband is a beekeeper, so she is used to having honey bees around, but she fell in completely in love with the solitary and bumblebee species. Her enthusiasm for the bees in her garden knows no bounds and she set about planting and growing as many plants that were suitable for these pollinators.

As she discovers more about these creatures, she starts to be able to identify more and more species around her garden and in the lanes near her home, such as the buff-tailed bees, cuckoo bees and even has a trip up to the Outer Hebrides to find the Great Yellow Bumblebee on the island of Balranald. There is more to this book than just the bees though, Howard is fascinated about all shapes and sizes of wildlife and the book is as wide-ranging as it is detailed. She is rightly concerned about the effect we are having on wildlife with our blanket use of pesticides and soon realises that each species is interdependent on lots of others in the ecosystem.

It is only when we realise that we are a part of nature, rather than apart from it, and behave accordingly that real change is likely to happen.

I really liked this book, she writes with warmth and boundless enthusiasm for all of the subjects and creatures that she chooses to write about in the book. Howard goes to prove that amateur naturalism is alive and well, we just need more people to be like her, start to care about their local patch, populate their garden with plants that pollinators adore. I love the little illustration at the beginning of each chapter and scattered throughout the book, and the endpapers are gorgeous. Highly recommended.

3 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 while since I took mathematics at university when I studied mechanical engineering. Compared to some of the other subjects on the course, like stress mechanics, which was just, stressful, it has always been a subject that I enjoyed. However, that was many years ago and I am a bit rusty at it, to say the least.

Maths has been a subject that has intrigued people going back hundreds and thousands of years, in fact, the first evidence of people counting was found on a bone in a cave between South Africa and Swaziland and is estimated to be over 40,000 years old. From this early beginning, Hart-Davis explains why people count using base 10 and base 60, something that we still do even today, before moving onto the mathematics that the Ancient Greeks did with squaring the circle and Pythagoras famous theorem.

They had bigger ideas though about what could be done with numbers and soon they were considering infinity, how to calculate Pi and how many prime numbers there were. The baton was passed to the Islamic world who gave us our numbering system that is still in use today, taught us how to solve quadratic equations and borrowed the concept of nothing from India.

Hart-Davis moves onto the Europeans with chapters on probability, imaginary numbers, the roots of calculus and Fibonacci sequence before covering game theory, the complexities of flow and the three-body problem. As the understanding of mathematics increased so the variety of things that it could describe, this was the era of statistics, Venn diagrams and chaos theory.

The final sections of the book have chapters on more modern mathematical solutions that describe how our modern communications systems work and some of the complex geometries that can be achieved with a little mathematical nous.

I thought that this was an approachable maths book that might even appeal to those that normally turn pale at the thought of a quadratic equation. Hart-Davis writes with a wry humour and it has clear and concise explanations of mathematical discoveries that have changed the way that we see the world and is laid out with lots of pictures and diagrams to make it feel a lot less like a textbook! I did spot the odd typo which baffled me on one of the chapters until I realised where the error was. Apart from that tiny omission, I thought that this was a nicely produced book.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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

As travel destinations go, South America is hard to beat, which is why in pre-COVID time it was popular on the backpacking circuit. Yossi was one of those who was there wanting to see the sights and enjoy life for a bit. He wanted to take a trip to Macchu Pichu but after he got talking to a man called Karl, the offer of a guided trip into the Amazon Rainforest in Bolivar was discussed. He was desperate to go, and managed to find a couple of others who were interested in doing it too.

The guy leading the venture was a little bit of a maverick and said that they only had a limited amount of time as he was going to see his uncle who had a remote ranch in around a months time. They collected supplies and soon after began their trip into the jungle. To begin with, it was just what they had hoped it would be, a tough adventure that would push them to their limits. Somehow they acquired a dog on their trek, but this was left at one of the villages. They ate what they found as they walked, from game to fruits, but slowly Yossi began to realise that the places where Karl said they would be, weren’t always there. Even though there was only four of them, tensions began to rise as the group dynamic fell apart and they made the fateful decision to split up into two pairs. Yossi and Kevin get to take the raft and Karl and Marcus would make their own way back to La Paz.

They are not that experienced with the raft and when they get to a small waterfall and all hell breaks loose. The raft gets stuck on a rock and Kevin jumps free. Just as Yossi is about to get off, it breaks free and he is carried over the waterfall and falls in the water. Somehow he doesn’t drown, but loses his pack and is washed ashore. He is utterly alone and doesn’t know if he will see anyone ever again. Making a shelter is the first priority, but the machete is with Kevin so he struggles to make something suitable. He finds his pack in the morning, but it is sodden. Thankfully the dry bag inside kept some things from getting too damp.

Now he had to find his way back to civilisation.

Not only did he have almost no food, everything in the jungle seemed to want to kill him. There was a heart-stopping moment when he was face to face with a jaguar and he came across snakes a couple of times that had the potential to kill. But what almost killed him was the relentless rain and water. He nearly drowned several times, the pervasive damp turned his feet into a bloody red mess and they had developed by a fungal infection too. Then there were the leaches and the fire ants and he even managed to pick up a horrid sounding bot fly.

He was so so lucky to survive this trip, none of the locals who were helping to search for him thought that he stood a chance of surviving and the way that he was found was a miracle. Quite what happened to the other two, Karl and Marcus, is anyone’s guess, though it is likely that they perished.

It is a bit of a page-turner, especially in the latter half of the book. I am sure that he did go through the events in the books, but I thought he was an ok writer, but occasionally the narrative felt a bit too fictionalised. I was surprised that he knew just how many days he had been staggering through the jungle as I think that most people by then would be just concentrating on staying alive. It did remind me of The Backpacker by John Harris, which is another chilling story of a holiday adventure gone wrong.

4 out of 5 stars

Farming is hard and relentless work even with modern machinery and techniques, to do it takes a certain amount of tenacity and a lot of sheer bloody-mindedness. It is part of the reason why a lot of people are choosing not to follow it as a career, even those that would be considered farming stock.

There are some though that cannot ignore that desire to work on the land. Patrick Laurie is one of those people. They pour their money into a small farm in his native Galloway, but rather than acquire modern breeds and the latest expensive equipment, he decides that he would rather get an older tractor and most importantly buy the Riggit Galloway cow, a hardy traditional breed, that is perfectly suited to this landscape.

He is one of the rare people wanting to move back onto the land; most deserted it years ago. The inevitable square plantations of commercial forest have sprung up, the centuries of tradition and sensitive land management have gone and the wildlife has suffered, in particular the curlew. These new Riggit Galloway’s need a completely different method of care compared to modern stock, and as Laurie learns about what they do and don’t need to survive, he discovers that these techniques could bring life back to the landscape.

Taking the land back to the old techniques of rotation and coupled with this and older species of cattle to make the land work as it used to, very quickly bring benefits. He restores an old mower to make hay as they did in the old days rather than take silage off the fields, this longer cropping help the curlews nest. He plants barley and rather than get a combine in to harvest it, it is cut and stooked (what a lovely word) in the old way.

Pain is a different thing under wide and rushing skies. Even in the bleakest moments of solitude, I draw a selfish glow from that kind of darkness. I hoard the prickle of sleet on my face and endure it, telling myself no one else would. I turn away from the warmth of sharing because now I see this place runs far deeper than play or simple sunshine.

It is a brutally honest book, he portrays farming in the cold light of day, the small successes and the brief moments of pleasure are set against the sheer amount of hard work it is just to stand still. It is a dangerous job too, he is not afraid to tell of near misses and the almost callous attitude you must have at times. What is very evident in this though is his deep, deep love of the landscape that he lives in. He is obsessed by curlews, those magical birds that have been disappearing for far to long and are now seriously threatened. I really liked his writing style, he is not nostalgic in any way, though he respects the old ways of working with not against the land. It is a book very much about the place, about Galloway, an often-ignored part of Scotland that has a beauty of its own without the dramatic hills of the highlands. Highly recommended.

2 out of 5 stars

This is a brooding gothic melodrama that is set in that most Victorian of places, the asylum. Nathaniel Kerner is appointed by one run by Dr Algernon Chettle called Crakethorn. It is located between North and West Ridings in Yorkshire and offered clean air, water gardens and healing springs. Chettle is a proponent of the science of phrenology, the study of skulls to try to elicit information about the mind and brain contained within the skull.

He is allocated the newest patient there, Victoria Harleston, who has been sent by her husband from another institute to be cured of her madness. She is a striking young woman, who at first glance doesn’t seem to be suffering in the same way that some of the other patients are. Kerner’s methods are very different from Chettles, but even they have very little effect on her. Stuck for ideas he invites a ‘mesmerist’ to try to cure her, but after he is left wondering if she really is mad, or the revelation that she reveals whilst under his influence is true.

The second part of the book is set in London. Kerner heads there in search of Harleston after she manages to escape Crakethorn. There is strong spiritualist undercurrent in the city with various seances and events taking place. It feels creepy that the first part of the book. In the final part of the book, they are all back at Crakethorn, and it is slowly dawning on Kerner just why Chettle has the asylum in the first place…

I liked the brooding atmospheric backdrop to all the scenes in the book. It feels well researched and authentic too, from the way that she describes the smells from the dogs, the way that different classes interact and the barbaric treatment of the patients in the asylum. The supernatural and spiritualist elements feel like they have been lightly dusted over the plot, they are there to enhance rather than be the central element. It has some really strong female characters too, but I thought it was overly convoluted and complicated and for me was missing that one moment of utter dread that a book of this style demands. Not entirely my book, but I thought it was well written nonetheless.

4 out of 5 stars

The British always find time to talk, and complain, mostly, about the weather it is a natural obsession. I am one of them, I find the way that the weather works around our planet endlessly fascinating. I often stop in when walking to take pictures of the beautiful cloud formations that we often get on the south coast. The weather is one of the most complex systems on our planet and it takes a supercomputer to produce a forecast for the next few days. Good as they are now, the ability for these computers to predict precisely what the weather is going to be in 4 months time in the afternoon is impossible.

I am not alone in this mild obsession, artists, writers and poets have this fascination too. J.R. Carpenter is one and this gem of a book is her response to the storms that battered the south-west in 2014. They caused catastrophic flooding in the Somerset levels and destroyed a railway line in Devon. I remember it well as it felt like it was never going to end.

This is a Picture of Wind is her response to those storms but with a focus on the wind, that movement of airs that you can feel but not see. She has mined her notebooks to find words and phrases that partially describe what is happening as we observe.

Trees grey with age. A pewter sky. Gleams light around the edges

I really liked this book, it is as simple as it is elegant with its prose. By taking the phrases that the weather forecasters use to describe what is going to happen and removing the context of when and where means that you can appreciate the beauty of each of the phrases. There are five sections to the book, The Beaufort Poems, A year at Tottenham, A Year at Sissinghurst, A Year at Sharpham and the Month Arrays. Each part reflects the dynamic ability of the weather to constantly and continually change. If you like list to the Shipping Forecast just for the pleasure of hearing the intonation of the phrases then you will probably love this. As part of the project, this is linked to a website that has live weather data here or follow  on Twitter to see regular updates.

This book is a beautiful tiny object too, and if there was one flaw, I would have liked it to be longer. For those that like watching the wind, this video of real-time wind systems across the planet is mesmerising.

5 out of 5 stars

Wizards are not known for their physical prowess, they would rather forgo exercise or similar activities for seconds and maybe even thirds at the dinner table. But if they want to keep eating, they are going to have to play a football match to ensure that the substantial financial endowment that they have from a local family continues.

They soon come to realise that the game of football played in Ankh-Morpork is pretty dangerous, two mobs swarm after the ball and there are lots of injuries and often deaths too. Worried by this, after all, you can’t eat if you’re dead, they concoct a plan with Lord Vetinari, the city tyrant and ruler, to amend the rules to make it safer for everyone. The wizards begin their training regime.

The new game of football has a lot of appeal to the people of the city and four unlikely people are pulled into the excitement surrounding the game. Mr Nutt has been employed at the Unseen University as a candle dribbler, he has always thought he was a goblin, but it turns out that he isn’t. His colleague and best friend there, Trev Likely, is the son of the Ankh-Morpork’s most famous deceased footballer, but he had promised late mum that he won’t ever play football. Also linked are Glenda and Juliet. Glenda works the night kitchen at the Unseen University and makes the very best pies on the Disc. Juliet is her glamourous assistant who has a bit of a thing for Trev and somehow ends up as a model for the latest micromail fashion.

As the two teams start to practice with the new rules and balls, everyone in the city is captivated with the match, after all, it is not just a game of football.

I am not a football fan, it really doesn’t do anything for me at all, I much prefer other sports such as cricket. Pratchett’s brilliance is taking a subject from our world and showing it a mirror. The reflection is not exactly the same, rather the traits and foibles that add to the richness of human life can all be seen in their stark and humorous shades and he has done that with this subject rather well. There are lots of other themes in here about the way humans work too that you really have to read to understand and empathise with. If there was one flaw, I thought it dragged a bit in the middle. It is not a book to be read in public as outbreaks of guffaws can happen fairly often with his prose. Very highly recommended.