Nature crawls
Blythe Spirit: The Remarkable Life of Ronald Blythe
Ian Collins (John Murray, £25)
ANXIOUS about tax on farmers and the UK’s vanishing plant and animal species? You could always take refuge in nostalgic literature about the English countryside, with recent books by the likes of Olivia Laing and Alexandra Harris much praised by critics. But the “new” nature writing may not be as cosy as it appears.
It started when poet Kathleen Jamie mocked Robert Macfarlane as “the lone enraptured male”, wandering over the hills with his Moleskine notebook. A few years later, Mark Cocker had another go at Macfarlane and others for “greenwashing” troubling realities. Poetic reveries by dons are out, it seems, while diverse voices and working-class nature writers are very much in.