The author of this books lives in the north of England and is an ex-police officer and a gifted photographer. The photographs are superb and the production values of this book are very high. There are carefully-designed large pages, gorgeous images and although I lingered over each image I was eager to see the next one too! There are six chapters, each with its star species: Polecat (that surprise

Photo: Lydia MacKinnon Nick MacKinnon is a freelance teacher of Maths, English and Medieval History, and lives above Haworth, in the last inhabited house before Top Withens = Wuthering Heights. In 1992 he founded the successful Campaign to Save Radio 4 Long Wave while in plaster following a rock-climbing accident on Skye. His poem ‘The metric system’ won the 2013 Forward Prize. His topical verse a

This book was published last week and I’ve been giving it a close look. It does what you’d expect from its title and cover – it’s a photographic identification guide to lots and lots of insects (and a very few non-insect arthropods sneak in at pages 22-23 and 639 and following). The 3,000 species are a selection of c25,000 UK and 105,000 European species, and lean strongly towards UK species, attr