The Consolation of Nature, Michael McCarthy
The Consolation of Nature, Michael McCarthy
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The Consolation of Nature
Spring in the Time of Coronavirus

Author: Michael McCarthy, Jeremy Mynott, Peter Marren

Narrator: Charles Armstrong, David Shaw Parker, Stephen Boxer

Unabridged: 6 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/15/2020

Synopsis

Nature took on a new importance for thousands of people when the coronavirus pandemic arrived in Britain, providing solace in a time of great anxiety - not least because the crisis struck at the beginning of spring, the season of hope and renewal; and furthermore, in an extraordinary conjunction, the spring of 2020 turned out to be the loveliest spring ever recorded in Britain.

Three nature writers, living like everyone else under lockdown, but walking out each day to exercise, resolved to record their experiences of the coronavirus spring, in widely contrasting parts of the country. They did so to share with others their sense of the wonder, inspiration and delight the natural world can offer, and The Consolation of Nature is the enthralling account of what they discovered by literally walking out from their front doors.

(P) 2020 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

About Michael McCarthy

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.

About Jeremy Mynott

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'.

About Peter Marren

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ellen on December 15, 2020

This was lovely. It is three men writing about spring in England during the lockdown. It was about the plants, birds, insects and animals which were around. It was also about the pandemic. I was not familiar with many of the plants and animals, so I was looking them up. It was important that this bo......more

Goodreads review by Rosalind on January 13, 2021

This is a diary of events during the first coronavirus lockdown, written by three well-known nature writers. The period is springtime and the writers in their different locations of England chronicle the rapid changes with the acute perception of their expertise, sharpened by the extraordinarily fin......more

Goodreads review by Joe on March 21, 2023

I felt this was a bit of a rushed pandemic cash-in, and sometimes came across as three rather privileged middle-class types muddling their way through the pandemic... It also failed to answer the question: what if nature doesn't provide consolation? What then?......more

Goodreads review by Rob on June 14, 2021

Contained some delightful stories, facts and literary references to the wildlife that surrounds us. Worth a second read.......more

Goodreads review by Steve on June 09, 2021

Homebound naturalists note what is on their doorstep during the lockdown of 2020.......more

Quotes

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 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. The Times

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

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.

The Consolation of Nature is as scintillating, perceptive and every bit as readable as Gibert White's Selborne

The book is an 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.

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.

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.

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

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