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Review: Inside the Wave
On 30th January at the Costa Book Awards, Helen Dunmore’s collection Inside the Wave posthumously won Book of the Year 2017. As only the second person to posthumously receive this prize, the award was received by Helen’s husband Frank Charnley and their two children Patrick and Tess. Inside the Wave reflects on the poet’s cancer diagnosis and looming death with immense honesty and bravery. Including poems that range from heartbreaking to humorous, the whole collection is a meditation on mortality with … Read more
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Review: Children of Blood and Bone
This review first appeared in the March 2018 issue of Books for Keeps, the UK’s leading, independent children’s book magazine. Follow them on twitter. Feature Review by Geoff Fox In a letter to her reader, Tomi Adeyemi hopes we “see a glimpse into my Nigerian heritage and the beautiful cultures and people Africa holds”. She wrote her novel “during a time where I kept turning on the news and seeing stories of unarmed black men and children being shot by … Read more
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Review: Wilding
In 2004 Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell took the momentous decision to stop conventional farming on the Knepp Estate. Driven by the economic unsustainability of modern food production on their sub-prime soils they desperately wanted to find a way to manage the land better and maintain its economic and ecological viability. The timing of their decision was fortuitous. Changes to EU and UK government funding for agriculture were opening up for subsidies to change the use of land. … Read more
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Review: Owl Sense
As a writer and naturalist, Miriam Darlington sets out to deepen our connections to wildlife, “to increase … curiosity for, understanding of and sympathy with the natural world”. Entranced by a close-up encounter with a captive owl, she plans to study every UK native species in the wild and learn about its biology, ecology and cultural associations. As the project begins her teenage son Benji becomes seriously ill and the family have to adjust and provide the care and support he needs. … Read more
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Review: Where the World Ends
Based on a true story from the wildest and most remote of the Scottish Isles and on events which took place nearly 300 years ago, Geraldine McCaughrean brings to life the characters from a very alien time and place so wonderfully that we instantly empathise and become engrossed in their ordeal. A party of nine boys and three men is set ashore on an isolated rock stack half a day’s sea crossing from St Kilda. They are to collect the … Read more
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Review: The Lost Words
In 2015, the Oxford Junior Dictionary published a new edition that saw many words from the natural world, like blackberry and acorn, omitted in favour of more technical terms, such as broadband. Dismayed at this, illustrator Jackie Morris was inspired to contact nature writer Robert Macfarlane to write The Lost Words, a beautiful book which has provoked an extraordinary reaction. Described as a book of ‘nature-summoning spells’ rather than poems, Robert Macfarlane gently restores the missing words – acorn, blackberry, … Read more
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Community Review: Black Fox Running
We visited award winning Grape and Grain Wine Merchants in Crediton who offer expert advice, friendly service, and a great range of wines, spirits, Devon beers and ciders. Bruce Evans, Grape and Grain proprietor, reviewed Black Fox Running and suggested beverages to accompany your read… A beautifully written book, delicate and subtle, with a gripping storyline running under the surface. The animals are bought to life with well developed characters, and Dartmoor is beautifully described on the page. All in … Read more
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Review: In the Mouth of the Wolf
In the 1950s, Francis Cammaerts was Headmaster of Alleyne’s Grammar School for Boys, Stevenage. His authority was never in question. Imposingly tall and military of bearing, he never spoke of his own part in World War II. So pupils and staff were astonished one evening to find their Head was the subject of Eamonn Andrews’s hugely popular television show, This is Your Life. They learned that their reticent Headmaster had been one of the most effective agents in the Special … Read more
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Review: Under the Rock
Benjamin Myers is a critically acclaimed writer most well-known for his innovative and atmospheric novel ‘The Gallows Pole’ which is set in the Calder Valley. Under the Rock is an exploration and memoir of the same area of Yorkshire, based on the 15 years or so since Myers made his home there. What fascinates Myers is the connection between the land and the people who live there; the impact of the people on the land and the influence of the … Read more
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Review: Time Song – Searching for Doggerland
Doggerland is the name given to the land mass now submerged beneath the North Sea, which once connected Britain with continental Europe. For much of the past two million years Doggerland was a rich landscape populated by diverse flora and fauna including mammoths, aurochs, bison, bears and humans. As recently as 7,000 years ago a significant area was land above sea level. All her life, Julia Blackburn has been fascinated by the ancient remains she has collected from the shores … Read more
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