Shooting Times & Country Magazine
White knuckles and wide eyes
As we learn there is to be little let-up on lockdown, we need a bit of escapism so Patrick Laurie shares some of his top reads
Ninety years after it was published, Henry Williamson’s Tarka the Otter still holds its own as one of the greatest pieces of writing about the British countryside. I first discovered Tarka when I was 13 years old, and I loved the rich, flowing language that followed the life of an otter in the West Country.
Crucially, Tarka is not a cute little Disney character, but a real animal with strange and compelling instincts. His world is full of magic, but author Henry Williamson does not dwell upon it unnecessarily in the way many modern writers would. For every moment of joy and pleasure, there is an equivalent note of terror or darkness to match it. In many ways, the book could be read as a story of otter hunting, and Tarka’s trials give us a compelling view on a sport which has now receded into our sporting history.
Two moments stand out for me and I could read them again and again. One is a moment when Tarka and his fellow cubs run across a watermeadow in the twilight. They are watched by a barn owl as the mist rises from the cool grass. The passage is so perfectly balanced that you could read it anywhere in the world and be instantly transported to the sleepy gloom of a Devon summer.
The second comes when Tarka fishes for pollack around a coastal shipwreck, only to find himself competing for his quarry with a shag and a conger eel. I challenge any naturalist or country person to read that chapter without white knuckles and wide eyes, and the story flows and swells like the tide itself.
Perfect name
Perhaps Tarka seems like an obvious choice for inclusion in this list of books for lockdown, but it has added significance for me since my son was born in January this year. On the morning of his birth, I happened to spot a grand old dog otter in the burn
that runs through our farm. A few hours later, my son was handed to me in a bundle and it seemed obvious that his middle name should be Tarka.
Tarka the Otter chimes with me because it refuses to shy away from the raw, unvarnished side of country life. My second book was chosen for the same reason. It is The Dig, a short story by Cynan Jones. Published in 2012, The Dig is a brutal tale of grief, criminality and rural life in a remote part of the Welsh countryside.
Much of the story is given over to the subject of badger baiting and it claustrophobia in the countryside that need to be explored and unpicked in public. The Dig is not a pretty book, but it is extremely important nonetheless.
American buffalo
From across the Atlantic comes Butcher’s Crossing, the 1960 novel by John Williams. Set in the late 1870s, the story follows William Andrews as he joins a buffalo hunting party in the Wild West. The history of the American buffalo is now widely understood as a tale of greed and
“The that instantly
Eastwood hanging around among the covered wagons, repeater rifles and lowing oxen. It would take a hard heart to remain unmoved by the conclusion, which seems to ask some fundamental questions about the very essence of hunting and man’s relationship with the natural world.
On a similar theme, Gavin Maxwell’s book Harpoon at a Venture
“Guided by a stray dog, Anderson finds his mark in the most heart-stopping fashion”
balances beautiful observations of the natural world against his account of trying to set up a business catching and processing basking sharks on the Scottish island of Soay after World War II. Maxwell must be one of Britain’s most consistently underrated writers, and while his name will be forever linked with otters after his Ring of Bright Water trilogy, his journalism and travel writing has almost completely vanished since his death in 1969.
Anyone who has spent time in the Hebrides and the west coast of Scotland will find plenty to love in Harpoon at a Venture. The story is laced with evocative descriptions of turquoise beaches and craggy skerries, but the real punch lies in the basking sharks themselves; grand, anonymous slabs of flesh and bone that sweep up the coast to feed during the summer months.
It’s fascinating to realise that, when Maxwell set up the business, there was no real understanding of how the massive sharks could actually be caught and killed. A process was finally developed that allowed the sharks to be brought to shore, but only after an extended period of trial and error. There are many moments when the reader is forced to wonder how on earth they would tackle a five-ton monster and there is a certain gungho recklessness to Maxwell’s crew as they learn their trade ‘on the hoof’.
Exciting
My final book has to be Nine Maneaters and One Rogue; a collection of short stories by Kenneth Anderson, detailing his time as a hunter in India. This entire genre has been grandly eclipsed by the great Jim Corbett, but without wanting to venture an overtly controversial opinion, Anderson is a more exciting writer. Perhaps his stories lack the majesty and fame of Corbett’s, but Anderson has a superb eye for the jungle atmosphere and he is a master of suspense.
Spotted devil
Nine Man-eaters and One Rogue is a bundle of short stories that can be read in a single sweep or digested separately over several evenings, but one stands far and above the rest in its ability to make my flesh crawl. Enticingly titled ‘The Spotted Devil of Gummalapur’, the tale follows Anderson’s attempt to kill a leopard in the streets of an abandoned village in the darkness.
Working largely on the guidance of a stray dog with excellent night vision, Anderson finds his mark in the most heart-stopping fashion. In the aftermath, he takes the stray dog into his service and ‘Nipper’ becomes a ready companion in a number of other tales.
Anderson is a purveyor of
‘Boy’s Own’ adventure of the most shameless kind, but it’s unfair to be too sniffy about his work. There is always a moment for pure, immersive escapism, and there is a great deal to love about this wildly entertaining little book.