Chosen by WATERSTONES as one of their BEST NATURE WRITING BOOKS of 2024Can you tell a tomato from a grape? Lawn from an oak tree? Then congratulations - you are a botanist.Self-confessed bad birdwatcher Simon Barnes thought he knew nothing about plants. He didn't object to them: trees are interesting, because birds perch in them; plants are useful as they create habitats and birds live in habitats. But while admiring the tenacity of some sea kale and yellow...

A unique and all-encompassing exploration of the wonders of flight and the waydifferent species have evolved different solutions to the problem of defying gravity – including humans.Flight fascinates us. We thrill to birds, we adore butterflies, we're baffled by bats and we can hardly believe in pterodactyls. We worship angels and we compare love, religious ecstasy and artistic achievement to flight. We love the idea of flight so much we invented machines that at l...

'He does write beautifully, especially of his greatest love - our wild birds ... On The Marsh is a delightful read.' Christopher Hart, Daily MailHow the rewilding of eight acres of Norfolk marshland inspired a family and brought nature even closer to home.When writer Simon Barnes heard a Cetti's warbler sing out as he turned up to look at a house for sale, he knew immediately that he had f...

From the acclaimed author of Rewild Yourself comes a brilliant new book that reveals the natural joys to be discovered on your doorstep.In the autumn of 2020, Simon Barnes should have been leading a safari in Zambia, but Covid restrictions meant his plans had to be put on hold. Instead, he embarked on the only voyage of discovery that was still open to him. He walked to a folding chair at the bottom of his garden, and sat down. His itinerary: to sit in tha...

THE BESTSELLING BIRDWATCHING CLASSIC - 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION'A delightful ode to the wild world outside the kitchen window - leaves you with the warm feeling that a shared love conquers all' The Daily TelegraphLook out the window. See a bird. Enjoy it. CONGRATULATIONS! You are now a bad birdwatcher.Anyone who has ever gazed up at the sky or stared out of the window knows something about birds. In this fu...

'Such a simple, clever book.' Rosemary Goring, The HeraldWe're not just losing the wild world. We're forgetting it. We're no longer noticing it. We've lost the habit of looking and seeing and listening and hearing.But we can make hidden things visible, and this book features 23 spellbinding ways to bring the magic of nature much closer to home.Mammals you never knew existed will enter your world. Birds hidden in treetops wi...

In 1915 the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves (later to become The Wildlife Trusts) published a list of 284 places in Britain and Ireland 'worthy of preservation' as permanent nature reserves. The list was the brainchild of the Society's founder Charles Rothschild. It included shingle beaches, highland mountains, ancient woods, stretches of coastline, unspoilt heaths and marshes where Rothschild and his colleagues would search for rare insects and plants. It was the first list o...

To understand Anna Karenina, Mellors, Molly Bloom, Dante, Romeo, Juliet and Bridget Jones you must also have loved and lost and won. To understand sport in the greatest arenas of them all you too must have played and lost and won, known shame, hope, joy, horror and glory.Simon Barnes has taken part in seven summer Olympic Games, five World Cups and ten Ashes series. Well, not exactly taken part, but certainly he was there and writing hard. And always, behind every ...

Praise for The Green Planet (BBC One)'David Attenborough's gobsmacking, awe-inspiring return' The Guardian'The Green Planet reveals the secret lives of plants in the same way The Blue Planet opened our eyes to the oceans' New ScientistThere's something new under the sunPlants live secret, unseen lives - hidden in their magical world and on their timescale. From the richest jungles to the harshest deserts, f...

From the author of The History of the World in 100 Animals, a BBC Radio Four Book of the Week, comes an inspirational new book that looks at the 100 plants that have had the greatest impact on humanity, stunningly illustrated throughout.As humans, we hold the planet in the palms of ours hands. But we still consume the energy of the sun in the form of food. The sun is available for consumption because of plants. Plants make food from the sun by the process ...

Memories of expat life in pre-handover Hong Kong.Lyrical, wry, amusing, deceptively gentle, Simon Barnes’s second novel packs a powerful punch after it has crept up on the reader with the narrator’s fond reminiscences of expat life in pre-handover Hong Kong. The hazy and often hilarious memories of work and play in the heartstopping beauty and pulse-racing commercialism of the colony is suddenly flooded by darker memories of tragedy and loss, although Barnes, the most optimistic an...

'So, so good! ... More gems than a pirate's chest ... science, art, history, culture - it's epic and mammoth, a repository of all our truths through their lives' Chris PackhamA powerful and fascinating insight into the 100 animals - from the blue whale to the mosquito - that have had the biggest influence on humanity through the ages.We are not alone. We are not alone on the planet. We are not alone in the countryside. We ar...