New Naturalist Series
- Galloway and the Borders
Shaun Castle 22 April 2007
NN’s distinctive dust-jacket design by Robert Gillmor
Conceived during wartime, the New Naturalist has provided expert accounts of Britain’s natural history for 60 years. Each volume in the series is a themed exploration of one particular subject, encyclopaedic in its breadth of knowledge, and beautifully illustrated with colour plates.
The latest volume Galloway and the Borders is a fitting tribute to its author, Derek Ratcliffe, who died shortly after completing the manuscript in 2005.
Ratcliffe’s first-hand account of this relatively unknown region is startling in its observations, at once a lament for the wealth of nature lost in our lifetimes, a celebration of a beautiful upland landscape, and an attempt to conserve it, in a rapidly changing climate.
Drifting masses of cumulus casting shadows over vast desolate hills carpeted in heather, block screes of grey granite and broad watersheds and peatlands—these are the abiding images which have made Ratcliffe’s images conservation icons—many of which liberally illustrate this volume, none more so than the images of vast waves of conifers breaking over the uplands of Kircudbrightshire.
Whilst Ratcliffe casts a broadstroke over the region, his real strength is illuminating the particular, whether its a ground nest of peregrine, a rare pyramidal bugle, a stonecrop on shore shingle, a waxwing in search of berries, or a young golden eagle feeding small young - the region is brought to life in all its affirmative diversity.
Published by HarperCollins
£45 (hardback) £25 (paperback)
Links to this post
