Turning the Boat for Home by Richard Mabey

 

Subtitled A life writing about nature, this is a collection of essays, originally published in a variety of  newspapers, books and magazines, from one of the UK's best nature writers.There's always the risk with this type of collection of essays that some of them, having been specifically written in response to something in the news or a newly published book, will date quite quickly. That luckily only applies to a couple of these essays. 

I always enjoy Mabey's writing, you can read my reviews of some of his earlier books by following the links below:

Nature Cure by Richard Mabey. 

Fencing Paradise by Richard Mabey. 

Weeds by Richard Mabey. 

Beechcombings - The Narratives of Trees by Richard Mabey.

The essays in Turning the Boat for Home cover a wide range of ecological topics, from the tenacity and adaptability of urban nature through the importance of preserving blanket bogs to foraging, the joys of birwatching (and listening!) and thoughts about tree planting. The quote below is taken from an article marking the tercentenary of the birth of the landscape designer Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, who popularised the planting of trees for ornamental and landscape effect;

"Planting amenity trees seems so self evidently a force for good that it's hard for us to understand what a novel practice it was before the eighteenth century. Why bother when trees appeared so magnanimously of their own accord? Now, addicted to the practice as a ritual of atonement, we've become blinkered to the fact that it's yet another expression of human power over nature. That trees have perfectly adequate, fine tuned reproduction systems of their own seems to have vanished from popular understanding."

Other items include an article on the unexpected nature trail alongside one of the UK's major motorways, an appreciation of the life of 18th century British naturalist Gilbert White, and an introduction he wrote to the book The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen, which I reviewed (very briefly) back in 2008, here. 

Mabey shares his wide ranging knowledge generously and in beautiful prose. His writing is always worth reading and this is a good collection to pick up and enjoy. 

Turning the Boat for Home by Richard Mabey, published (2021) by Vintage.