Book Reviews Roly Smith
Finding WH Hudson
Conor Mark Jameson Pelagic Publishing , £ 21.99 ( pb )
An imposing , life-size oil painting of a keen-eyed , bearded man holding a pair of binoculars dominates the main meeting room at the RSPB ’ s headquarters in The Lodge at Sandy in Bedfordshire . “ The man above the �ireplace ” – as he is affectionately known by staff – is William Henry Hudson ( 1841 – 1922 ), the Argentinianborn naturalist , author and campaigner who was instrumental in founding the RSPB , which now boasts over a million members , in 1889 . This book , written by a man who worked for the RSPB for 25 years , provides a fascinating and previously untold journey into the Pampas-born naturalist ’ s path from his journey to Britain
/ in 1874 , to the unveiling by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin of a monument and bird sanctuary in his honour 50 years later in London ’ s Hyde Park . Ironically , this was a place where the young immigrant Hudson had for a time slept rough when he �irst arrived in Britain . But at its core , this extraordinary story reveals Hudson ’ s deep in�luence on the creation of his beloved Bird Society ( it became the RSPB in 1904 ) by its founders , who were largely women , and the subsequent rise of the conservation movement . By the end of his life , Hudson was a household name in Britain through his voluminous and acutely-observed nature writing , and the Bird Society had reached the climax of a 30-year campaign , working to create the �irst global alliance of bird protectionists . A century after Hudson ’ s death , this is a welcome and long overdue tribute to one of our most signi�icant – and possibly most neglected – writernaturalist and wildlife campaigners .
Walking the Bones of Britain
Christopher Somerville Doubleday , £ 25 ( hb )
Areviewer on The Times , on which the author has been its highly respected walking correspondent for many years , once wrote that he could “ write about mud and make it interesting .”
Somerville comprehensively proves that in this fascinating epic though an intermittent , 1,000-mile , three-billion year , journey from the Outer Hebridean island of Lewis to Wallasea Island on the Thames Estuary . And the author �inds plenty of mud to interpret along the way , from the saltmarshes of Wallasea Island to the peat bogs of the Pennine Way between Gargrave and Edale , where he quotes John Hillaby , the man whom he says �irst inspired him to become a writer through his 1968 classic Journey Through Britain . If there is one criticism of the author ’ s own fascinating and absorbing journey through Britain , it is the overly-scienti�ic detail he goes into about the geology and geomorphology of each area through which he passes . Aided throughout by local
4 outdoor focus / winter 2023