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The Consolation of Nature: Spring in the Time of Coronavirus
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The Consolation of Nature: Spring in the Time of Coronavirus
240Hardcover
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Overview
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RICHARD JEFFERIES SOCIETY & WHITE HORSE BOOKSHOP LITERARY PRIZE
'Lovely: full of fascinating detail and anecdote, but the undertow of the virus moving in real time beneath its sunlit surface gives it a unique emotional heft.'
-The Times
'A literary window into the wonderful wild world during lockdown... a charming book.'
-Daily Mail
'An entrancing testament to nature's power to restore us to ourselves.'
-Ruth Padel
Nature took on a new importance for many people when the coronavirus pandemic arrived, providing solace in a time of great anxiety - not least because the crisis struck at the beginning of spring, the season of light, growth, rebirth and renewal.
Three writers, close friends but living in widely separated, contrasting parts of the country, resolved to record their experiences of this extraordinary spring in intimate detail, to share with others their sense of the wonder, inspiration and delight the natural world can offer.
The Consolation of Nature is the story of what they discovered by literally walking out from their front doors.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781529349153 |
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Publisher: | Hodder |
Publication date: | 08/10/2021 |
Pages: | 240 |
Product dimensions: | 5.75(w) x 8.75(h) x 0.75(d) |
About the Author
Michael McCarthy is one of Britain's leading environmental journalists, formerly environment correspondent of The Times and environment editor of The Independent. He has won a string of awards for his writing, including the Medal of the RSPB, for 'outstanding services to conservation.' His book Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo (2009), a study of Britain's summer migrant birds, was widely praised; The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy (2015) was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize and the Richard Jefferies Prize.
Jeremy Mynott (Author)
Jeremy Mynott is a classical scholar, Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge and former Chief Executive of Cambridge University Press. He is the author of various books on wildlife and nature. Birdscapes: birds in our experience and imagination (2009) was described by one reviewer as 'the finest book ever written on why we watch birds'. His latest book, Birds in the Ancient World: Winged Words (2018), was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize and was a TLS 'Book of the Year'.
Peter Marren (Author)
Peter Marren is a nature writer and commentator, author of Bugs Britannica, Rainbow Dust, Chasing the Ghost and many other books on British plants, insects, and the countryside. He won the BSBI President's Prize for Britain's Rare Flowers, which was also runner-up for the Natural World Book Prize. He was awarded the Thackray Medal for The New Naturalists by the Society for the History of Natural History. His satirical column in British Wildlife magazine, Twitcher in the Swamp, has a cult following.
Table of Contents
Maps xi
Introduction: Spring in the Time of Coronavirus 1
1 The Spring Equinox and the Lockdown: 21-25 March 13
A blossoming wild cherry, blackcaps and chiffchaffs singing, willow buds bursting, coltsfoot in flower, mating gnats and sallow mining bees, an effusion of spring butterflies, the blackthorn winter, a lost wild pear tree, the manners of birds, buzzards in the sky where the planes used to be, walking the Long Way, and the cheering effect of jackdaws
2 When Spray Beginneth to Spring: 26 March-1 April 37
Ash, oak and elm buds opening, a dipper that's not a dipper, Jack flowers and Willie flowers, synchronised swimming by great, crested grebes, three different scavengers contesting a corpse, skylarks ascending, red kites in London, wayfaring trees and traveller's joy, cuckoo bees, the importance of cow pats, and a rescued oil beetle
3 Now That April's There: 2-8 April 59
The first orange-tip, Robert Browning's longing, yellowhammers, the first brimstone, weasels, pond slime, birds of tree trunks, the flower carpet of a holloway, a silent supermoon, finding a colony of house sparrows, liverworts and horsetails, and telling leaves by touch
4 The Easter Weekend and the Cuckoo: 9-14 April 79
Suburban violets, Gilbert White and Henry David Thoreau, holly blues, the song thrush as a comedian, a willow warbler in a willow tree, a stately home for a nuthatch, the scarlet bottom of a great spotted woodpecker, rainbows moving, frog sex, goldcrests and a lesser whitethroat singing, and the first cuckoo of the spring
5 The Coming of the Swallows: 15-20 April 97
Swallow arrival, the Thames towpath, the elusive gropper, an owl madrigal, celandines lesser and greater, a farmed landscape in decay, an egg-laying brimstone, the twizzle, the streedle and the chuggle, moth names, herb-paris, a dead mole and its epitaph, and another swallow (this one just passing through)
6 Bluebell Time: 21-27 April 115
Bluebells at their peak, different shades of green, dazzling little egrets, the mayfly and its hatches, a suburban wheatear, the black poplar, the St Marks fly, yellow wagtails, a trio of cuckoos, a tunnel decorated in white flowers, and lords-and-ladies with their perilous berries
7 Spring Rain: 28 April-6 May 133
April showers and the petrichot; wild flowers of suburban streets, ubiquitous muntjacs, reed buntings no longer in the reeds, Gerard Manley Hopkins and the month of May, Sedgie and his repertoire, the first, speckled wood, secrets of the red campion, an obscure planarian, dryads of all kinds, and a singing whitethroat
8 They're Back!: 7-14 May 151
The return of the swifts, Denis Summers-Smith, the lost wych elm of Ramsbury, the Beverley Brook, cow parsley and the seasonal parade of umbellifers, the mystery of the scent of lilac, a garden warbler, Grey of Falloden, the munching marsh marigold moth, brimstone caterpillars, and fox fables
9 Mid-May's Eldest Child: 15-23 May 169
A landscape rewilded, birds heard versus birds seen, the seductive, scent of the musk rose, yellow flag irises, the small heath butterfly, dying ash trees, village names, an encounter with a grass snake, fairy rings, the Duchess of Burgundy, the two smells of elder, and George Eliot's imagination
10 In My End Is My Beginning: 24-31 May 191
May feeling like summer, a spotted flycatcher after all, village wild flowers, lost turtle doves, goldfinches and nyjer seed, looking for hares, the grace and violence of kestrels, the painful bite of a cleg, the lessons of the spring, bee orchids in the Roman ruins, and the dusk chorus
Coda 211
Index 215