The stunning, specially commissioned cover illustrations are one of the great joys of the New Naturalist series, lending it a distinctive style which has inspired nature enthusiasts for many decades.The Collins New Naturalist series is the longest-running and arguably the most influential natural history series in the world with over 100 volumes published in over 60 years. Throughout the years, the highly characteristic dust jacket illustrations have become iconic, lifting the book...

An author's walk "from source to sea along the Ouse in Sussex is a meandering, meditative delight" drawing on history, literature, and the river itself ( The Guardian, UK).In To The River, author Olivia Laing embarks on a weeklong, midsummer odyssey along the banks of the River Ouse in Sussex, England, from its source near Haywards Heath to the sea, where it empties into the Channel at Newhaven. More than sixty years after Virginia Woolf drowned he...

This edition does not include illustrations.‘Dry Store Room No. 1’ is an intimate biography of the Natural History Museum, celebrating the eccentric personalities who have peopled it and capturing the wonders of scientific endeavour, academic rigour and imagination.Behind the public façade of any great museum there lies a secret domain: one of unseen galleries, locked doors, priceless specimens and hidden lives.Through the stories of the numerous eccentric individuals whose...

I hope this short book throws some more light on one of the great communicators.I have interviewed Sir David Attenborough many times, mainly for articles published in the UK broadcasting listings magazine Radio Times. These essays and shorter pieces - on subjects ranging from the world's rarest birds to meerkats, from a strange Easter island statue to his one pet hate, the rat - are based on articles of mine first published in that magazine and on the PBS website, with additional c...

A wonderful meditation on the English landscape in wet weather by the acclaimed novelist and nature writer, Melissa Harrison.Whenever rain falls, our countryside changes. Fields, farms, hills and hedgerows appear altered, the wildlife behaves differently, and over time the terrain itself is transformed.In Rain, Melissa Harrison explores our relationship with the weather as she follows the course of four rain showers, in four seasons, across Wicken Fen, Shropshire, ...

As a young boy, Charles Darwin hated school and was often scolded forconducting “useless” experiments. Yet his passion for the natural world was so strong that he suffered through terrible seasickness during his five-year voyage aboard The Beagle. Darwin collected new creatures from the coasts of Africa, South America, and the Galapagos Islands, and expanded his groundbreaking ideas that would change people's understanding of the natural world. About 100 illustrations and a clear, exciting...

Founded in 1894 by James Wright Beswick, Beswick Pottery remained in the family for three generations before becoming part of Royal Doulton in 1969.As owners and collectors of its products will testify, Beswick aimed to produce well-made ceramics at affordable prices: wares which could be used daily in the home as well as decorative ornaments for animal lovers of all ages to cherish.In this volume Val Baynton explores the range of products, revealing that f...

From the author of Earth: An Intimate History, an exuberant "biography" of four acres of woodland, evoking a cosmos of living and inanimate things and imagining its millennia of existenceA few years ago, award-winning scientist Richard Fortey purchased four acres of woodland in the Chiltern Hills of Oxfordshire, England. The Wood for the Trees is the joyful, lyrical portrait of what he found there.With one chapter for each month, we move t...

Buttons have been made from almost every known material. Their study provides insight into fashion trends, the clothing industry and social history in general. This book introduces an array of these treasures from the past, to show the variety of materials and the intricate design and workmanship incorporated in the making of the button.

‘Trees are wildlife just as deer or primroses are wildlife. Each species has its own agenda and its own interactions with human activities …’Written by one of Britain’s best-known naturalists, Woodlands offers a fascinating new insight into the trees of the British landscape that have filled us with awe and inspiration throughout the centuries.Looking at such diverse evidence as the woods used in buildings and ships, and how woodland has been portrayed in pictures and photo...

A fascinating look at the men who made Britain the center of the botanical world—from the author of Magnificent Rebels and New York Times bestseller The Invention of Nature.**“Wulf’s flair for storytelling is combined with scholarship, brio, and a charmingly airy style.... A delightful book—and you don’t need to be a gardener to enjoy it.” —**The New York Times Book ReviewBringing to life the science and ...

Spinster Mary Anning, uneducated and poor, was of the wrong sex, wrong class and wrong religion, but fate decreed that she was exactly the right person in the right place and time to pioneer the emerging science of palaeontology, the study of fossils.Born in Lyme Regis in 1799, Mary learned to collect fossils with her cabinet-maker father. The unstable cliffs and stealthy sea made the task dangerous but after her father died the sale of fossils sustained her family...