Enchanted forests: the women shaking up nature writing
The worlds of conservation and nature writing are overwhelmingly white and male. But the Forestry Commission is taking steps to change all thatA chilly breeze blows through the wood and the old tree...
View ArticleFinding solace in nature, with Luke Turner – books podcast
This week, music journalist and writer Luke Turner takes Claire for a wander through the trees and history of Epping Forest as they discuss his book Out of the Woods. Turner began roaming this woodland...
View ArticleThe Creativity Code by Marcus du Sautoy – review
A wide-ranging study claims that, whether in mathematics or the arts, computers won’t create anything of value unless they acquire consciousnessMarcus du Sautoy is the kind of science writer who cares...
View Article‘Cherry’ Ingram by Naoko Abe review – an obsession with Japan’s blossoms
Visions of modern Japan and an evocative historical journey – the story of an Englishman’s horticultural devotionPity the manga translator faced with cherry blossoms in an opening scene. You could fill...
View ArticleHumble Pi by Matt Parker review – a comedy of maths errors
Impossible footballs, skyscrapers that shake, the next Y2K-style bug – when maths goes wrongYou might think you have a phone number, but you don’t really. It’s not a number: you’re not going to perform...
View ArticleClearing the Air by Tim Smedley; Choked by Beth Gardiner – review
Two studies of air pollution reveal the shocking worldwide damage of the atmospheric killerOn Friday 5 December 1952, a thick fog settled over London. The city’s “peasoupers” were a common event in...
View ArticleChoked by Beth Gardiner review – the toxic truth about the air we breathe
Diesel fumes in London, smog in Indian and Chinese cities … a global survey of air pollution explores the fight for a cleaner futureAmbient air pollution, like smoking, can seldom be definitively...
View ArticleThe Nocturnal Brain by Guy Leschziner review – bizarre sleep stories
From eating and motorbike riding while asleep to corks in the bed as a cure for restless legs – a neurologist’s casebookJackie, a softly spoken woman in her 70s, had to get rid of her beloved motorbike...
View Article‘When we dream, we have the perfect chemical canvas for intense visions’
US journalist Alice Robb, author of a new book about the science and life-changing potential of dreams, talks about her researchAlice Robb is an American science journalist who has written for the...
View ArticleThe Science of Storytelling by Will Storr review – the lure of novel ideas
The journalist and author’s compelling guide to creative writing reveals how our brains are wired to respond to narrativesThe American novelist John Barth claimed that rather than the traditional “what...
View ArticleThe Dinosaurs Rediscovered review – a transformation in our understanding
Colour, speed, how they ate ... our knowledge of dinosaurs has undergone a revolution, as this expert survey makes clear“Dinosaur” is still sometimes used as a pejorative. The image of a lumbering...
View ArticleWhat lies beneath: Robert Macfarlane travels 'Underland'
From prehistoric cave paintings to buried nuclear waste, underground spaces record how humans have lived. To explore Underland means voyaging into the deep past – and raises urgent questions about our...
View ArticleJared Diamond: So how do states recover from crises? Same way as people do
The bestselling environmental historian tells why his latest book, Upheaval, about how countries come through turmoil, is his most politicalIt is hard to imagine that the renowned environmental...
View ArticleUnderland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane review – extraordinary...
Science and romance collide in Robert Macfarlane’s latest journey through nature, as he examines the world belowLast Christmas, perhaps wishing to get rid of an unwanted appendage to the family, my...
View ArticleWill Eaves wins Wellcome book prize for fictionalised take on Alan Turing
Murmur, which depicts the mathematician’s ordeal after he was convicted for having a gay lover, is hailed by judges as ‘a future classic’Will Eaves’s fictionalised account of the chemical castration of...
View ArticleGreta Thunberg's speeches to be rushed out as a book
No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference is being published in June, with a family memoir due to come later in 2019The collected speeches of 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who...
View ArticleUnnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd review – pathology under the microscope
This fascinating memoir describes the life and many deaths of Britain’s top forensic pathologistShepherd’s first major case as a forensic pathologist was the Hungerford massacre in 1987. One of his...
View ArticleLiz Howe obituary
Ecologist and herpetologist who did much to pioneer the conservation of terrestrial species in WalesThe ecologist Liz Howe, who has died aged 59 from cancer, helped produce a modern environmental...
View ArticleCows, farmers and murderers: Tim Pears picks the best books on rural life
The breadth of the landscape is examined in interviews, photographs, cartoons and novelsMost of our land lies between the wild and the urban: the rural. No bucolic retreat, it’s a fiercely contested...
View ArticleOrchid Summer by Jon Dunn review – in search of the wildest flowers of the...
A delightful survey of ‘orchidaceous treasures’, from County Clare to LindisfarneJon Dunn saw his first orchid as a boy on a Somerset hillside. Its intense colour, “a rich, royal purple”, was unlike...
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