The Consolation of Nature: Spring in the Time of Coronavirus

by Michael McCarthy, Jeremy Mynott, Peter Marren

Overview

ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S BEST NATURE BOOKS OF 2020

SHORTLISTED FOR THE RICHARD JEFFERIES SOCIETY & WHITE HORSE BOOKSHOP LITERARY PRIZE

'Lovely: full of fascinating detail and anecdote, but the undertow of the virus moving in real time beneath its sunlit surface gives it a unique emotional heft.'
-The Times

'A literary window into the wonderful wild world during lockdown... a charming book.'
-Daily Mail

'An entrancing testament to nature's power to restore us to ourselves.'
-Ruth Padel

Nature took on a new importance for many people when the coronavirus pandemic arrived, providing solace in a time of great anxiety - not least because the crisis struck at the beginning of spring, the season of light, growth, rebirth and renewal.

Three writers, close friends but living in widely separated, contrasting parts of the country, resolved to record their experiences of this extraordinary spring in intimate detail, to share with others their sense of the wonder, inspiration and delight the natural world can offer.

The Consolation of Nature is the story of what they discovered by literally walking out from their front doors.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781529349160
Publisher:	Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd.
Publication date:	10/15/2020
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	944 KB

About the Author

Michael McCarthy is one of Britain's leading writers on the environment and the natural world. As a journalist, he was the Environment Correspondent of The Times, covering the early measures taken to combat climate change, culminating in the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro; later he was the long-standing Environment Editor of The Independent. He has won a string of awards for his work, including Environment Journalist of The Year in the British Environment and Media Awards (three times); Specialist Writer of The Year in the British Press Awards; the Silver Medal of the Zoological Society of London; the Dilys Breeze Medal of the British Trust for Ornithology; and the Medal of the RSPB for 'outstanding services to conservation.' As an author he has written Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo (2009), a study of Britain's summer migrant birds, which was widely praised; The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy (2015), which was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize and the Richard Jefferies Prize, and described by The New York Times as "an idiosyncratic and wonderful walk through his joy of nature"; and (with Jeremy Mynott and Peter Marren) The Consolation of Nature - Spring in The Time of Coronavirus (2020) which was chosen as one of The Guardian's Nature Books of The Year.
Jeremy Mynott is a classical scholar, Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge and former Chief Executive of Cambridge University Press. He is the author of various books on wildlife and nature. Birdscapes: birds in our experience and imagination (2009) was described by one reviewer as 'the finest book ever written on why we watch birds'. His latest book, Birds in the Ancient World: Winged Words (2018), was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize and was a TLS 'Book of the Year'.

Peter Marren is a nature writer and commentator, author of Bugs Britannica, Rainbow Dust, Chasing the Ghost and many other books on British plants, insects, and the countryside. He won the BSBI President's Prize for Britain's Rare Flowers, which was also runner-up for the Natural World Book Prize. He was awarded the Thackray Medal for The New Naturalists by the Society for the History of Natural History. His satirical column in British Wildlife magazine, Twitcher in the Swamp, has a cult following.

He is also a Fellow of the Linnaean Society and has travelled the world in search of wildlife and has co-led wildlife tours all around Europe. He has written papers on endangered species and official reports on local extinctions. He waited until reaching an appropriately mature age before tackling the subject that energises all our efforts to preserve what is left of the world's wildlife and wild places: extinction.

Table of Contents

Maps xi

Introduction: Spring in the Time of Coronavirus 1

1 The Spring Equinox and the Lockdown: 21-25 March 13

A blossoming wild cherry, blackcaps and chiffchaffs singing, willow buds bursting, coltsfoot in flower, mating gnats and sallow mining bees, an effusion of spring butterflies, the blackthorn winter, a lost wild pear tree, the manners of birds, buzzards in the sky where the planes used to be, walking the Long Way, and the cheering effect of jackdaws

2 When Spray Beginneth to Spring: 26 March-1 April 37

Ash, oak and elm buds opening, a dipper that's not a dipper, Jack flowers and Willie flowers, synchronised swimming by great, crested grebes, three different scavengers contesting a corpse, skylarks ascending, red kites in London, wayfaring trees and traveller's joy, cuckoo bees, the importance of cow pats, and a rescued oil beetle

3 Now That April's There: 2-8 April 59

The first orange-tip, Robert Browning's longing, yellowhammers, the first brimstone, weasels, pond slime, birds of tree trunks, the flower carpet of a holloway, a silent supermoon, finding a colony of house sparrows, liverworts and horsetails, and telling leaves by touch

4 The Easter Weekend and the Cuckoo: 9-14 April 79

Suburban violets, Gilbert White and Henry David Thoreau, holly blues, the song thrush as a comedian, a willow warbler in a willow tree, a stately home for a nuthatch, the scarlet bottom of a great spotted woodpecker, rainbows moving, frog sex, goldcrests and a lesser whitethroat singing, and the first cuckoo of the spring

5 The Coming of the Swallows: 15-20 April 97

Swallow arrival, the Thames towpath, the elusive gropper, an owl madrigal, celandines lesser and greater, a farmed landscape in decay, an egg-laying brimstone, the twizzle, the streedle and the chuggle, moth names, herb-paris, a dead mole and its epitaph, and another swallow (this one just passing through)

6 Bluebell Time: 21-27 April 115

Bluebells at their peak, different shades of green, dazzling little egrets, the mayfly and its hatches, a suburban wheatear, the black poplar, the St Marks fly, yellow wagtails, a trio of cuckoos, a tunnel decorated in white flowers, and lords-and-ladies with their perilous berries

7 Spring Rain: 28 April-6 May 133

April showers and the petrichot; wild flowers of suburban streets, ubiquitous muntjacs, reed buntings no longer in the reeds, Gerard Manley Hopkins and the month of May, Sedgie and his repertoire, the first, speckled wood, secrets of the red campion, an obscure planarian, dryads of all kinds, and a singing whitethroat

8 They're Back!: 7-14 May 151

The return of the swifts, Denis Summers-Smith, the lost wych elm of Ramsbury, the Beverley Brook, cow parsley and the seasonal parade of umbellifers, the mystery of the scent of lilac, a garden warbler, Grey of Falloden, the munching marsh marigold moth, brimstone caterpillars, and fox fables

9 Mid-May's Eldest Child: 15-23 May 169

A landscape rewilded, birds heard versus birds seen, the seductive, scent of the musk rose, yellow flag irises, the small heath butterfly, dying ash trees, village names, an encounter with a grass snake, fairy rings, the Duchess of Burgundy, the two smells of elder, and George Eliot's imagination

10 In My End Is My Beginning: 24-31 May 191

May feeling like summer, a spotted flycatcher after all, village wild flowers, lost turtle doves, goldfinches and nyjer seed, looking for hares, the grace and violence of kestrels, the painful bite of a cleg, the lessons of the spring, bee orchids in the Roman ruins, and the dusk chorus

Coda 211

Index 215

Editorial Reviews

A literary window into the wonderful wild world during lockdown...a charming book—Daily Mail

A significant and beautifully written historical record of a unique English spring—Adam gretton, The Harrier

As our lives constrict again, the long spring lockdown already seems a lifetime ago. But that beautiful and frightening time has been perfectly captured in The Consolation of Nature by the naturalists Michael McCarthy, Jeremy Mynott and Peter Marren. Each reports from their home patches - Richmond, West Suffolk and North Wessex, respectively - to describe the progress of a record-breakingly sunny spring as human activity slowed and stilled. As a set of nature diaries it's lovely: full of fascinating detail and anecdote. But the undertow of the virus moving in real time beneath its sunlit surface gives it a unique emotional heft. When we emerge from this crisis our relationship with the natural world must change. This book surely is a record of the beginnings of that shift.—Melissa Harrison, The Times

A powerful and moving reflection on the solace brought by nature and its power as a balm for stressed-out lives—Caroline Lucas MP

What joy - three of our greatest nature writers in one book! What they felt under lockdown is surely what we all felt, that primal need to be out in nature - balm for body and soul. There's acute and beautiful observation on every page, thrown into exquisite relief by the poignancy of the circumstances. Against the backdrop of anxiety and doubt, their experiences bear witness to the inspiring and ever-hopeful lesson that nature can heal itself - and us - if we let it.—Isabella Tree

The Consolation of Nature is as scintillating, perceptive and every bit as readable as Gibert White's Selborne—Professor Tim Birkhead, FRS

The book isan entrancing testament to nature's power to restore us to ourselves. To read it is to open your eyes to everything around you, from an egg-laying butterfly to the value of cowpats. In the company of three generous naturalists, you wander down a Lovers' Lane of close observation plus humane imagination, into the tangled bank of wild and hidden life that still goes on, despite all we have done to it, in our countryside and parks. The Consolation of Nature is a consolation in itself.—Ruth Padel

These three distinguished writers are all steeped in the natural world, yet each is of highly individual sensibility and comes from a very distinct part of the country. For all the differences between them, they have produced a book of fundamental unity with a singular conclusion: that coronavirus and all its consequences reveal the central importance of nature to the British as a nation and to humans as a species. Their message could not be more timely.—Mark Cocker

Probably the best tribute to spring since Edward Thomas's In Pursuit of Spring... A spell-binding paean to the best and worst spring ever which shows how deeply Nature absorbs, stimulates and nurtures us.—Matthew Oates

They all write superbly and their styles and perspectives are sufficiently different to add variety to the passage... but not so different that any grates with the others. It is so beautifully written—Mark Avery

As expected from these three authors, it is beautifully written, but it is also extremely evocative.—Martin Harper, Global Conservation Director RSPB

I was entranced by the close observations of wildlife by three eloquent and experienced naturalists during the 'lockdown year', proof, if any were needed, that nature provides succour when it is most required—Richard Fortey, FRS

Credit to three of our most distinguished nature writers...This is an entertaining and insightful diary of lockdown, which really manages to capture the essence of the unique spring of 2020—Stephen Moss, 2020 Round-up of Nature Books

The joy of The Consolation of Nature is the privileged glimpse into the minds of really good naturalists - and they are admirably good. There is much written about nature and about its importance to humanity, and no lack of earnest rhetoric, but to see into the intimate and personal chambers of the minds of people who love nature, who live and breathe it, who cherish it and who find it an endless source of wonder, this is the delight of this book. There are no great messages, no edicts, no cajoling of our consciences, this is simply the everyday joy that the natural world provides at a time when we need it the most. I loved savouring it, small sections at a time, the reading equivalent of a slice of cake with tea - something to look forward to and enjoy for no other reason than it is a treat. That is not to say it is without wisdom, there is so much understated wisdom on every page, but it is for the reader to find and absorb for themselves and to ponder in a gentle way, like turning over a leaf and finding butterfly eggs, or suddenly spotting a buzzard high over London. J B Haldane was right when he said the world will not perish for lack of wonders but lack of wonder. This is a book that infuses the reader with wonder on every page.—Mary Colwell-Hector

From the Publisher