This debut work of non-fiction has already received widespread critical acclaim – this year, it was shortlisted for the Wellcome Prize, and won the Wainwright Golden Beer Prize. As The Outrun is a memoir of Liptrot’s slide into alcoholism, and her efforts to remain sober by returning to the place of her birth and raising, Read More
Get rid of words and meaning, and there is still poetry. Yang Wanli (1127-1206) Firstly, Newcastle University and Bloodaxe Books must be congratulated for instigating and publishing this innovative series of lectures. Quantum Poetics gathers three given by former Welsh National Poet Gwyneth Lewis. Though highly engaging and accessible, these are not for the dabbler. Read More
Deemed by publisher Freight Books as a ‘vital analysis of the state of the nation following the SNP surge at the 2015 general election’, Iain Macwhirter’s Tsunami: Scotland’s Democratic Revolution is a unique insight into the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum and its aftermath. Considering Macwhirter’s first-hand experience in the political arena (his work as a Read More
In Brussels in 1511, figures are sculpted from the snow that has fallen for weeks. They include commissions sculpted by artists and the subjects Charon, Pluto and assorted Devils. Winter has brought the beauty recorded in Breughel’s playful paintings to the southern Netherlands. It also destroys. It kills. This dichotomy is central to Peter Davidson’s Read More
Lynn Gamwell (Princeton University Press, 2015); hbk, £37.95 Secondary school education seems to continually instil pupils with the concept of the incompatible nature of the discipline of mathematics and the arts. Indeed, such is the acceptance of their opposition that you tend to fall into the category of being good at one and not the Read More
Death is an important subject in biology. After all, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace independently arrived at the concept of natural selection by contemplating death. After reading Thomas Malthus’s notorious Essay on Population, they realised that, unchecked by death, the ability of living things to reproduce would quickly result in astronomical numbers of every Read More
“This little patch of ground was exactly that: common. And all the richer for it.” In a sense, this sentence summarises both the strengths and weaknesses of Common Ground. In particular, pragmatic people are likely to ask: “If it is so common, what warrants writing so extensively about it?” From a reductive perspective, one might Read More
The Serengeti Rules is a an excellent book on ecology written by a molecular biologist, S B Carroll, in which he links mechanisms of control found at the molecular level with the factors determining the relative numbers of plants and animals living together in ecosystems. The decisions of policy makers and funders over thirty years have Read More
The Sutherland Clearances continue to provoke controversy, particularly the notion of “Improvement” and the causes of migration, and there are inherent difficulties where most of the primary sources emanate from the Establishment. In Set Adrift Upon the World, Hunter, Emeritus Professor of History and former director of the Crofters’ Union, has delved into personal letters, Read More
John Lister-Kaye’s ninth book, Gods of the Morning: A Bird’s Eye View of the Highland Year, reflects on landscape and wildlife, particularly birds – Virgil’s “gods of the morning” – over four seasons at Aigas, the Highland field centre by the Beauly River, which he owns. The book opens with the death of a blackcap Read More