Conservation and sport
Hero of Kumaon: The Life of Jim Corbett
Duff Hart-davis has written a spellbinding tale about an extraordinary conservationist: Jim Corbett. Such are the author’s skills as a countryman that the reader can almost feel the insect bites and tension in the jungle of late-19thcentury Northern India.
Corbett had a deep empathy with wildlife. Due to a lonely childhood, he immersed himself in nature, learning to mimic and read bird and animal cries. Later, this enabled him to locate his targets: the tigers and leopards that threatened the villages.
He was supremely fit, too, thinking nothing of walking 20 miles a day, then perching up a tree to wait hours for a man-eater to return to a kill.
When asked what turned him from hunter to photographer, Corbett gave a single event: a duck shoot, where a group of young officers shot 300 wildfowl – more than they could carry, let alone eat. Plus ça change.
This is an outstanding tribute, engulfing the reader in a world of nature, danger, courage and skill.
Hugh Oliver-bellasis By Duff Hart-davis
Merlin Unwin, £15.99
Iconotypes: A Compendium of Butterflies & Moths
Full disclosure: this isn’t a new book. In fact, it’s nearly 250 years old. But this is the first time that Jones’ seminal work of natural history has been published. Comprised of forensically detailed paintings and annotations for more than 750 species of Lepidoptera, Jones provides the species name, geographic location in which it was found and the collection it came from (he used many besides his own).
His manuscript and its accompanying papers are housed in the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History. Here, the compendium appears alongside expert commentary, contextual essays and annotated maps. The compelling introduction from Richard I Vane-wright puts Jones in the context of his time and his contemporaries.
While this will obviously appeal to natural historians and academics, Iconotypes is also for those who want something truly beautiful to display on their coffee table.
Ettie Neil-gallacher By William Jones
Introduction by
Richard I Vane-wright
Thames and Hudson, £65
Irish Country Sports: A Heritage
This excellent book has more than 50 contributors, who pay tribute to Ireland’s magnificent sporting legacy. It is a must for any lover of British fieldsports. But whilst commemorative and celebratory, there is also a stark warning to those who misunderstand the critical part played by fieldsports for both the countryside and rural communities.
In his prologue, Titterington asserts that should such pursuits be further curtailed, ‘our native habitats, species, ethics and way of life will be profoundly and perilously diminished’. His words are echoed in a joint foreword by landowner
Bill Montgomery and Jim Shannon MP, which extols the part country pursuits play in conservation.
The 13 chapters are thematically arranged and feature a rich array of photographs, covering everything from dog breeds to falconry and taxidermy, angling to stalking, hunting to gunmakers. It finishes with an index of suppliers.
Ettie Neil-gallacher Edited by Albert Titterington Country Lifestyle Exhibitions (tel 028 4483 9167),
£40 (incl p&p)
The Burbot: In Search of Britain’s Rarest Fish
The burbot – long thought extinct in this country – has become a sort of angling talisman for the good old days of fishing, when it was less sophisticated and more gentle. Author
Jim Langridge is quick to dispel such sentiment but enjoins his readers to seek out the wilder places and to approach their fishing with an easier frame of mind.
His work is a beguiling and pleasingly eccentric read, covering the history of this fabled fish, which even by piscatorial standards wasn’t much of a looker. A cousin of the cod and the eel, it favours cold waters, is largely nocturnal and was found mainly lurking in the lower reaches of the rivers in the east of England, as far north as Middlesbrough, as far south as Cambridge and as far west as Birmingham.
Langridge has an engaging style and is amusing, too. Jokes about the irony of its Latin name being Lota lota and going to fish for burbot in Sweden under the pretence of seeing German industrial rock band Rammstein in concert raise a smile.
Ettie Neil-gallacher By John Langridge
Medlar, £26