Bees, Ghosts and breaking the law
One June, in Devon, I encountered a few unusual small pink pennants in the long green grass of a meadow. They drew me in for a closer look. Clusters of these pennants were positioned along a tall stem. At the centre of each rested a bumble bee-sized brown velvet oval with yellow markings. An odd...
Megan McCubbin: Wild in heart and soul
Megan McCubbin, a familiar face to viewers of the BBC’s Springwatch and Animal Park, is a passionate and eloquent champion of wildlife and one of Britain’s foremost young naturalists. Having grown up in and around the Isle of Wight Zoo, and travelled the world on assignment with step-dad and now fellow Springwatch presenter Chris Packham...
Towards a poetics of wreckage
There is something thrilling about a beautiful book – a book whose aesthetic, material presence, and the evocative momentum of its ideas and the words that embody them, seek to touch a reader’s every nerve, even that insubstantial vital centre we call our soul. Susan Stewart’s The Ruins Lesson: Meaning and Material in Western Culture...