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Food for Free (Collins GEM)

by: Richard Mabey

August 02, 2004
This little gem of a book should be in every backpackers back pocket. Concise, focused and descriptive you'll have no trouble identifying the plants and shellfish. There has been some comments about lack of information on animals to eat, this is probably because rabbits, pheasants and such are classed as game and will belong to the landowner. Whilst it's ok to pick a few plants, mushrooms and shellfish it will probably be frowned on if you start blasting away at the countryside or setting traps!

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Food for Free (Collins Natural History)

by: Richard Mabey

April 02, 2007
This little gem of a book should be in every backpackers back pocket. Concise, focused and descriptive you'll have no trouble identifying the plants and shellfish. There has been some comments about lack of information on animals to eat, this is probably because rabbits, pheasants and such are classed as game and will belong to the landowner. Whilst it's ok to pick a few plants, mushrooms and shellfish it will probably be frowned on if you start blasting away at the countryside or setting traps!

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Lark Rise to Candleford: A Trilogy (Penguin Modern Classics)

by: Flora Thompson

May 25, 2000
Fans of the BBC adaptation should give this a wide berth if they are expecting witty tales of honest farm folks told in the style of Catherine Cookson. For example, the Pratt Sisters whose ludicrous antics and matching outfits took up so much of the BBC series, have little more than one page in the whole of this book! Miss Lane and her post office does not appear until the final 3rd of the compilation. There is no forbidden romance with the local Squire or any tension between him and his wife. Dawn French's larger than life Caroline gets one chapter on a page!

Instead, this is a glorious peek at the history of rural England, a wonderful read packed with information about the housing, social scene, class system, rural customs and some stories ... Read More:

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Beechcombings: The Narratives of Trees

by: Richard Mabey

September 04, 2008
After the somewhat vague meanderings of Nature Cure, Richard Mabey pulls of a brilliant book that is both a pleasure to read and a real education without ever feeling heavy. The use of language is once again a triumph in evoking the feel and splendour of our beech woodlands. My only real gripes are that whilst the book is a much better and structured read the ending does seem to come about rather suddenly and that my favourite rural author, H. J. Massingham, is dismissed as 'romantic'. Well there's nothing wrong with being romantic and you have to place your mindset at the time when Massingham was writing. But we digress. All in all a thoroughly good read.

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Beechcombings: The Narratives of Trees

by: Richard Mabey

October 04, 2007
After the somewhat vague meanderings of Nature Cure, Richard Mabey pulls of a brilliant book that is both a pleasure to read and a real education without ever feeling heavy. The use of language is once again a triumph in evoking the feel and splendour of our beech woodlands. My only real gripes are that whilst the book is a much better and structured read the ending does seem to come about rather suddenly and that my favourite rural author, H. J. Massingham, is dismissed as 'romantic'. Well there's nothing wrong with being romantic and you have to place your mindset at the time when Massingham was writing. But we digress. All in all a thoroughly good read.

Average Rating:

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Food for Free

by: Richard Mabey

October 01, 2001
This little gem of a book should be in every backpackers back pocket. Concise, focused and descriptive you'll have no trouble identifying the plants and shellfish. There has been some comments about lack of information on animals to eat, this is probably because rabbits, pheasants and such are classed as game and will belong to the landowner. Whilst it's ok to pick a few plants, mushrooms and shellfish it will probably be frowned on if you start blasting away at the countryside or setting traps!

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Birds Britannica

by: Mark Cocker, Richard Mabey

September 01, 2005
Yes, this book is everything the other reviews say it is. If you like a bit of social history and literature with your birds, you will find this a satisfying read. Above all, Cocker is 'a good writer', which means his prose is always palatable at the very least.

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Flora Britannica: The Definitive New Guide to Britain's Wild Flowers, Plants and Trees

by: Richard Mabey

October 07, 1996
It is true that this has to be one of the worse titled books of all time. A FLORA in any sense here should be an identification guide and it isn't that at all - it is a personal exploration of various plants concentrating not necessarily on the most important but on those for which the author has an affection for or simply information on. The main interests are folklore and distribution - industry and use and even literature get short shrift, oddly. It is true too that plant introductions are widely covered, but the distinction in terms of salience would be rather misleading (do we miss out horse-chstnut?...). The joy of this book which frankly does NOT look as though it was twenty years (flap) in the making is the writing and out of the way sources Mabey has dug up and in ... Read More:

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Nature Cure

by: Richard Mabey

April 06, 2006
I really wanted to love this book. Depression is a vile, destructive thing, and also something of a mystery, and any tale of its defeat should be both inspiring and informative. Add to this the location, the East Anglian countryside, this book looked (to me) irresistible. And then there were all the fulsome comments from national newspapers on the cover...

However, in the end I was disappointed. I learnt little about depression, its causes and cures - or about the real inner life of the author. I got little sense of the horror of depression at the start, of an eventful and bumpy journey in the middle, of any interest in the psychological forces at work as we travelled, or of a real cure at the end.

Behind a veil of lyricism, the author is really rather ... Read More:

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The Natural History of Selborne (Penguin English Library)

by: Gilbert White

May 26, 1977
The edition of this book that I possess (circa 1970's) claims that this is something like the third most published book in the English Language, loved from America to Japan. It is a seminal book. When Linnaeus was creating his very methodical classification of the natural world it took a vicar from the little village of Selbourne to put in stone the study of nature through its behavior.

This book taught me how to examine the world around me, but it also offers the guilty pleasure of complete escapism. What could be safer then 1780's Southern England, as yet untouched by industry? Gilbert creates a world where human concerns do not exist and the rhythm of the natural world is all through this collection of letters to his friends.