The Frayed Atlantic Edge by David Gange

This was recommended to me by a friend during the course of a conversation about traditional boats while we were engaged in searching for lichens on Dale Head on one of those August days when even the mountain tops become too warm.

It is a carefully crafted account of a journey or more accurately a series of journeys stitched together to explore the west coast of Britain.  The author is an historian and the journey was by necessity fragmentary so as to allow for his lecturing commitments.  It is a journey undertaken largely by kayak.

The early chapters give a flavour of the techniques involved in kayaking through the exposed and hazardous waters around Shetland where the journey begins.  The narrative includes historical context, wildlife encounters and accounts of interactions with local inhabitants.  He quickly realises that the advice given by local people includes descriptions of the uniquely dangerous sea condition that he will encounter.

As the book progresses, we are told less of the kayaking and more of the local landscape and its historical and cultural connections.  I was staying on North Uist while reading the chapter on The Western Isles: I had just returned from a walk on the Udal Peninsula where I'd turned back from trying to cross to Vallay to take a close look at a ruined building as the channel seems too hazardous an undertaking.  That same evening I read that the son of the archaeologist who'd lived there had been drowned while crossing to the island.  Sometimes it turns out that a decision had been a good one !

David is clearly a traveller who values the wild places.  As he continues south, he comments that the 'coast' becomes the 'seaside' and friendly meetings become rare events and are replaced by contentious confrontations.  He seems to lose the joy of the journey as he continues southward beyond Bardsey.

This is a thoroughly good read and one that I found highly informative and enjoyable.

 

Orison for a Curlew by Horatio Clare

 

This is a beautiful read.  It comes from a writer who is very undervalued.  He has a degree of bravery to give his book a title that includes a word like orison.  A word that I imagine many will not have come across let alone know its meaning.  He is not playing to the gallery.

It is the tale of travels that are ostensibly a search for the Slender-billed Curlew that is now, more than ten years on, generally considered to be extinct.  Even at the time of his travels and writing the book there was, in reality, a vanishingly small chance of success in finding the bird.  His travels do have a purpose beyond finding that elusive species, and that is to meet conservationists and wildlife enthusiasts who have had a similar quest - to search for and discover more about this enigmatic bird.

In meeting these people within the known range of the bird from the Mediterranean to Omsk (which lies just to the north of Kazakhstan) he gets a flavour of its former habitat.  The commitment of his contacts in these areas is an inspiring testament to their dedication in the context of what is surely a lost cause.  

The last known photograph of this curlew was taken at Merja Zerga in Morocco in 1995.  Many birders travelled to that during the 1990s, one of whom I was in conversation with just a few weeks ago.  Instances of breeding of the species are known from only one area, that is Tara, Omsk where birds bred from 1905 until 1925.

The slide towards extinction was obscured by a series of what are now known to be erroneous reports of the bird.  Identification of this curlew is not entirely straightforward and visiting birders to its winter haunt in Morocco may have been seduced by wishful thinking as they watched distant curlews in the shimmering heat of the lagoon.

As if this sad tale of extinction is not strange enough there is a further strange episode to follow.  My late friend Tim Cleeves found what he believed to be a Slender-billed Curlew in Druridge Bay, Northumberland in May 1998.  The bird was watched by many observers and it was photographed.  The bird was accepted by the British Birds Records Committee and admitted to the British List by the British Ornithologists Union Records Committee.  The record was then reviewed in 2013 and found to be 'Not proven'.  It is no longer on the British List.  The size of the file relating to this is the largest ever considered by these bodies.  It is unfortunate that the quality of the photographs are far inferior to those we generally see today in this age of digital images taken on sophisticated equipment.

The process of submitting the description of the Druridge Bay bird along with the subsequent review to find the record Not proven was a harrowing one for Tim.  Years later he told me that he wished that he had never found the bird.

Our Brains, Our Selves by Masud Husain

I happened to hear the author while listening to an episode of Start The Week on Radio Four towards the end of 2025.  The content and the character of the author immediately appealed to me and I pre-ordered the book.

The author is Professor of Neuroscience and Cognitive Neurology at the University of Oxford.  The book is structured by recounting a series of case studies.

There were two elements that drew me to explore this.  The chance to read a contemporary account of clinical pathways was one.  The other was the humility and commitment of the author. 

The narrative style is very engaging and he is adept at setting the scene in a way that draws the reader in without intruding too much on the important content.

The outcome of the cases described is sometimes one of dramatic recovery and at other times it is a recognition that there is no available treatment.  Even in such cases it appears that the author has been able to help the patient come to terms with and accept their situation.

The patients concerned and perhaps more importantly their supporters sometimes present as aggressive or sceptical of the clinical approach on offer.  These cases made me smile inwardly and reminded me of such encounters during my time as an NHS clinician.  Such encounters are not easy to deal with but the author seems to have a high level of tolerance of unhelpful behaviour and presents a model response.

During the course of each case study there is some interesting explanation of the anatomy and physiology involved.  This is very measured and I felt that he gave just enough scientific information without overloading the reader.

The book was a joy to read and was a heartwarming series of cases in which the author is compassionate and tenacious in his quest to help each one of his patients.

The Light Eaters by Zoe Schlanger

This is a well researched account of recent research into how plants communicate.  The author is a former staff writer for the Atlantic who covered climate change.  She became fascinated by plants and set off on a journey to explore the work that is taking place on the communication that takes place between them.

This communication that takes place is in many cases quire remarkable to hear about and equally remarkable is the degree to which the processes involved are little or not at all understood.

I found it quite refreshing that the author sets the scene for each chapter with some nice description that draws the reader in; she does not go on to make it all about herself as some nature writers do.

It is overall nicely written although I do have some gripes.  The use of footnotes is excessive and these sections could easily have been incorporated into the main text.  Also the mixing up of some singular and plural terms such as bacterium and bacteria was a bit grating.

There is some very interesting discussion around the concepts of consciousness and intelligence that we understand from a very human or at least mammalian perspecive.  Plants appear to exhibit some of these qualities but without apparently having the structural features that we think of as being necassary to facilitate some of the ways in which they grow..  For instance how does a climbing plant sense the presence of structures that it is about to climb up from some distance away - it almost seems that the plant can see in these instances.

Thinking back, I was also struck by the simplistic nature of schooldays biology lessons that described tropisms, phototropic and so on.  These terms described what plants do but failed to address the question of how they do it.

I suspect that the book may not age well.  It presents a snapshot of current knowledge.  How much will we understand of the processes involved over coming years ?

 

The Invisible Doctrine by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson

Neoliberalism is a term that was, I assume, created to have a benign ring about it in order to disguise its far from benign ethos.  It might better be called ultra-capitalism.  Interestingly those who espouse the ideology no longer attach the term to their movement; it has now gained a disreputable flavour from which its adherents try to distance themselves.

The book has almost a textbook feel to it.  Words are not wasted in providing a comfortable narrative, it is very much a concise account of the history and progress of the movement and how it has influenced all our lives.  Having said that it is concise, it is not particularly well written and I found myself re-reading many sentences in order to extract their meaning.  The main cause of this is the use of long unweildy sentences.  Someone like Monbiot should know better.

The authors describe the effects of the myth of 'trickle down economics' where the enrichment of the wealthy trickles down to the less well off.  The failure of this is well exhibited by the growing inequality in incomes and wealth that have been seen over recent decades.

I was interested to read of the strategy employed by governments of all stripes that was used to effectively bring an end to NHS dentistry.  This process took place under the banner of 'Investing in Dentistry'.  It was well understood by those in the profession but has slipped mainly under the radar of the press, as was clearly intended. 

The book provides a good analysis of Neoliberalism and is well worth a read.

 

War Diaries 1939 - 1945 by Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke

This may seem a strange and atypical choice of read.  The reason why I came to it is that it was recommended by Iain Martin during one of the 'Not another one' podcasts which I have reviewed earlier on this blog and which I listen to regularly.  I respect his choice of literature and his choice of wine but not necessarily his political views !

The diaries were written contemporaneously and the text of the book has later reflections interspersed with the diary entries.  They were never intended and indeed specified as never to be published.

I found the book to be interesting as a chronological documentation of WW2, the events of which I had never previously looked at in the round.  It showed the tortuous negotiations that lead up to events that I had rather considered to be clear choices before reading this.

One of the comments that Iain Martin made was that the author would go off birdwatching at every opportunity.  This turned out to be rather less interesting than I had hoped and shooting birds in horribly large numbers was something that he indulged in without seemingly recognising that killing birds for fun was not a particularly morally defensible practice.  One character whom he meets on numerous occasions is Richard Meinertzhagen who was something of an ornithologist at the time as well as being a soldier.  I would like to have had more comment on these meetings beyond the author finding them 'interesting' - Meinertzhagen has subsequently been revealed as a fraud in a number of ways and made many claims that have been shown to be false.

Alanbrooke is however generally considered as a soldier of high moral values and that was probably the case.  He writes about the folly of war as a process to achieve certain ends and expresses his view that mankind will soon come to that conclusion - how disappointed he would be to witness today's war-torn world !

The narrative reveals a deep frustration with the process of running a war from his position as Chief of the Imperial General Staff.  Much of this frustration lay at the door of Churchill but also of many others including Mountbatten.  The later additions to the diary go some way to moderating his criticisms but his general view of his managing his Generals is that once a plan is formulated then what follows is that all parties fight with each other instead of getting on with fighting the enemy.

It is a fascinating read, all 700 pages of small print !

 

                                   Is A River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane

I have long had mixed feelings about this author.  Some years ago I started to read one of his books and after only a few pages I found his comments about geese so far off the mark that I put the book aside.  On a much more positive note I have heard interviews with him that showed him to be a thoroughly nice person.  There is of course no inconsistency in these aspects of his persona.

My reason for reading this book was that it was selected for discussion in the Brampton Climate Change Reading Group.

The book discusses three rivers, one in South America, one in India and the other in Northern Canada.  The thesis in all three is that a river can effectively be killed.  The death of each results from chemical pollution, sewage effluent and the results of creating dams.  I learned a lot about the many chemical processes which hand in hand with the failure of governments to regulate have created such devastating pollution.

The prioritisation of wealth over environmental protection lies at the heart of the problem.  The degree to which indigenous peoples have been the main losers is astounding.  While Western Societies blame the less developed nations for environmental damage, it comes as a shock to learn that Canada has behaved equally badly in this.

The tenor of the narrative focuses very much on the concept of giving a river a life in a spiritual sense.  The author agrees to and seems to embrace the instructions given to him in advance of his canoe trip down the Canadian river, that he offers gifts to the river and communicates with the river in a spiritual, not to say cranky way.  This might well be dismissed by people of a scientific or rational thinking mind.  Would it not be more powerful to governments to consider the good sense of applying environmental controls for the wider benefits that they would bring.  Self interest in this respect might be a very powerful motivator.

Jacksons, Monk & Rowe and the Brodsky Quartet the formative years by Jacqueline Thomas

I have known the music of this string quartet over many years but I have recently had a resurgence of interest while playing some of their CDs involving collaborations with artists such as Elvis Costello.

  A search for any live performances showed that one at nearby Cockermouth had just taken place but remarkably there was one shortly to take place at Gatehouse of Fleet, an opportunity not to be missed.  Searches for live performances particularly of world renowned musicians usually come up with far flung venues so the chance to hear the Brodskys next week relatively nearby was too good to miss. 

This prompted me to delve a little further and I found Jacqueline Thomas's memoir.  This is a wonderful read and a tale of hugh dedication to ther quartet that she formed at the age of ten.  It comes across as touchingly honest and Jacqueline frequently writes of cringing at the youthful arrogance of her younger self.  Frequent setbacks at competitions did little to blunt the enthusiasm of the young players who all lived within easy walking distance of each other in Linthorpe.  It describes some of the music at a level of detail that could have been opaque to those not deeply steeped if string playing and music of this genre but it never is.

An added ingredient of interest for me is that the Thomas family lived in the Linthorpe suburb of Middlesbrough very close to my childhood home and I remember her older siblings.  She attended the same primary school as I did and mentions three teachers there who taught me.

Living the rarified life of a classical string player at so young an age in the often rough environment of Middlesbrough gave Jacqueline challenges beyong those that I also faced but to much lesser a degree.  It was however a different place half a century ago when the industries of Dorman Long and two important ICI chemical works provided mass employment and an influx of scientists and high level managers to raise the intellectual stakes of the region.

This is a wonderful and heartwarming read and I can't wait to hear them play next week !

 

Didn't you used to be Chris Mullin - Diaries 2010 - 2022

 This is a delightful and insightful read !

This came as no surprise to me as I read some of his earlier diaries some years ago.  These diaries were just as interesting a read as the earlier ones, although in a rather different way.  The earlier diaries spanned a time when Chris Mullin was a Labout MP for Sunderland and a good deal of the content related to the period of Tony Blair's leadership.  He refers to Blair as 'The Man' which is a nice device and reflects something of his opinion of Blair.  This involves quite a mix of feelings from admiration of Blair's rhetorical skills to seeing the more fickle side of him.  These earlier diaries gave a close reflection of those in power at the time which I found gave me a considered view of events and of the main political players of that time who featured in contemporaneous news reports that I remember.  In effect an historical retrospective.

This volume of diaries relates to the time when Chris Mullin was no longer an MP but had acquired considerable renown and financial reward for his various books and screen adaptations.  So while they lack the close reflection on the current politicians they deal with more recent events and give a wider perspective of his life as a Booker Prize judge, National Parks Authority Committee member and member of his local and historical community.  

There is a good del of humour in the diaries.  One comment that amused me was his reflection of times when his wife travelled abroad which left him free to do whatever he liked without having to account for his actions.  Although the diaries received an edit, this was clearly of a very light touch and his reactions and feelings remain true to the time.  

One rather troubling event is where West Midlands Police bring legal action against him for refusing to reveal the source of some evidence that was used in the freeing of the wrongfully imprisoned Birmingham Six.  His journalistic preservation of confidential source material prevailed and he was aquitted, this does not make me view the police in a better light.

He is a person for whom I have great admiration.  As a Remainer he was MP fro a constituency which voted strongly for Brexit.  He represented a community which had a prevailing hatred of foreigners despite many of them never having met one - they formed their views from the Right Wing Tabloid press.

Betrayal - The Murder of Robert Nairac GC by Alistair Kerr

 

This represents quite a departure from my usual range of reading and came about because it was lent to me by a friend from whom it came with a glowing recommendation.

The loan was inspired by my having read a biography of Paddy Mayne, the SAS war hero which I had lent to my friend.  I consequently had something of a degree of interest in military history.

I found this book completely fascinating.  It is incredibly well researched and running to over 400 pages it includes much peripheral context.  From it I gleaned insight into the history and individual style of the Oxford Colleges and how it was for people hoping to gain entrance to these in the late 1960s which was the same time that I was engaging in University entrance.  The author is very much of the opinion that standards have fallen since those times and that the liberalisation that has taken place over that half century is very much a bad thing.  I have some sympathy with his views on standards but mine relate more to scientific rigour rather than the cultural democritisation that he rails against.  His views differ from mine in other spheres but more on that later.

When one has lived through a certain time and listened to media reports in a very immediate way it can be difficult to form a properly informed view of events.  It has been very educatioal to read of the events of 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland in a retrospective fashion.  It was clearly an incredibly complex picture of the interaction of the British Army, the SAS, and the RUC, all of which should have had a common purpose but which had different priorities and restraints.  For example the Army personel were there for a time limited period whereas the RUC were operating there centrally to their lives - there was no exit plan for them.  Similarly the PIRA and OIRA operated to different standards and with different levels of violence and restraint.

Political angles are explored and the author is clearly very right wing and has got nothing good to say about labour poloitcians:  Harold Wilson is treated in a particularly excoriating way.  The Political Left are roundly condemned.

The analysis of events is forensic and fair.  Much has been written about the events of the murder and much is incorrect.  Some of this stems from some of the protagonists' attempts at damage limitation and avoidance of reputational damage.  The author navigates his way through all this in a fascinatingly robust fashion and left me, as the reader feeling that the truth as far as it could be ascertained had been arrived it.

It is a thoroughly good read that left me feeling unlikely to be very satisfied with pretty much anything that I might read next.

How they Broke Britain by James O'Brien

 

When I came across this book all those months ago in Gairloch I was very much in two minds as to whether I wanted to read more about the woes that Britain is suffering and who was responsible.  It has taken a while for it to get to the top of my reading list.

The book starts with chapters on the right wing press from Murdoch to Andrew Neil and then gets onto politicians.  The early chapters I found rather dull and overly complex with multiple characters that I was not particularly familiar with.  The writing seemed to jump about leaving me wondering just who was being discussed at the time on many ocasions.  I was unimpressed and uninspired and felt a distinct sense that I was getting little from the book.

As the chapters turned to political figures with Farage being the first to feature it did'nt draw my attention much more.  Then as David Cameron entered the narrative I suddenly felt a sense of engagement - it became fascinating.  I wonder to what degree this was related to my own areas of interest or did the author suddenly become enlivened.

James writes about Cameron's background, the Bullingdon Club and the general sense of entitlement that stems from the elitist education that he and others of his ilk went through.  The content here was not particularly new to me but the analysis was fresh and engaging.

The next chapter dealing with Jeremy Corbyn had me even more enlightened.  It still puzzles me why so many people whom I regard as being well informed and critically thinking were so impressed by Corbyn.  It was interesting to read how figures such as Gordon Brown were concerned about his ascendency.  The background to Corbyn's association with jihadists gave me perspective on the concerns that many expressed about his sense of judgement.  I also learned that his team went to great lengths to keep him away from serious political interviewers for fear that the flaws in his policies might be exposed.

The remaining chapters on Johnson and Truss simply reinforced the views that I already had on these two.  His analysis of Johnson is particularly excoriating and frames him as being entirely driven by self interest.

It was after all a worthwhile read while not being an exceptional one. 

If Russia Wins A Scenario by Carlo Masala

Carlo Masala is Professor of International Politics at Bundeswehr University Munich.  He has an impressive CV with roles in Nato Defence College and Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies.  This book is no amateur scare story.

Recent history has shown that predicting geopolitical events is a sphere into which the wise would be well advised not to venture.  This however is a predicted scenario that is worthy of attention.  The author takes us through a series of future events that follow Putin's predicted victory over Ukraine.  These are the very events that all those who have lent support to Ukraine have feared.  The Coalition of the Willing - those thirtyone countries who pledged support for Ukraine - seemed to be a committed body at its inception.

The book describes how largely domestic events overtake the earlier resolve that members of the Coalition held.  How much does the Russian incursion into a small Estonian town matter ?  What are the risks of escalation into WW3 if Russia is confronted ?  Will this seemingly insignificant incursion be the end ?  How much have the lessons from Hitler's pathway been learned ?  

Russia's words represent a striking mismatch with its actions.  Worryingly the mismatch of the words of the West with its deeds strike a chilling chord.

 

The Meaning of Geese by Nick Acheson

 I started reading this book at the end of last winter just as the wintering geese on the Solway were departing for their breeding grounds.  I was so enthralled by the content and so much liked the direct but nevertheless lyrical writing style that I temporarily shelved it.  This was because I wanted to be immersed in my local north Cumbrian wintering flocks of geese while reading it.  The past few weeks have seen vast flocks of Barnacle Geese return to the Solway from their Svalbard breeding grounds and returning Pink-footed Geese from where they breed in Iceland.  The scene was now set for me to finish the book.

This book is generally to be found under the 'Nature Writing' section in bookshops.  This category is one with which I have some difficulty.  I would have a preference for placing it somewhere that reflects its degree of specialisation and authority.  This is no run of the mill 'Nature book'.  It is interesting and probably significant that while Nick has written columns in some prestigious publications this is actually his first book.

The form that the book takes is by progressing through the winter starting in September with the earliest arrivals of geese and concludes at the end of April when most have departed.  It recounts Nick's journeys on an old red bicycle around the lanes of north Norfolk as he searches for flocks of geese.  He is a native of that part of Norfolk and keeps in contact with James McCallum that wonderful water colourist whose speciality is geese and also with a few other knowledgeable observers and ringers of geese.

The narrative while being based on Nick's travels around his local area also brings in a wealth of information related to when the different species of geese arrive and depart and also where their core breeding areas are located.  The whole text comes across as being completely honest; it is sprinkled with details that give atmosphere while it never seems forced or includes unnecessary embelishment.

This is undoubledly one of the most enjoyable, inspiring and informative accounts that I have read.  I would have little hesitation in awarding it my wildlife related book of the year.