Selected Writings 1974-1999 by Richard Mabey Chatto & Windus 326pp, £20 in UK
During a career which began with a modest guide to the often overlooked gastric delights freely available in the field, and continued with works as diverse as Whistling in the Dark, an intimate and beautiful study of the nightingale, and the magnificent Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey, biographer of the 18th-century naturalist Gilbert White, is well established as an outstanding natural history writer who has remained within the best tradition of a specifically British genre. Though informed and concerned, he is never polemical, and has consistently maintained a relaxed, engaging, unegotistical style of writing which is accessible, vivid and understated.
Most importantly, unlike an increasing number of naturalists, he never mythologises either his subject or himself, remaining practical and to the point.
Equally at ease writing about the beauties of Oxford, the tense wait for the seasonal reappearance of the swift - "my first swift had to fly above a high meadow I crossed on my way to afternoon cricket on the first day of May" - or the prophetic foreboding contained in the novels of Thomas Hardy, he invariably achieves an encompassing overview. Above all, Mabey is a traveller and observer, never a guru. His books rank among those one tends to keep close at hand, beside the bed or on the desk, never merely on the shelf.
The publication of the visually seductive and imaginatively presented Flora Britannica in 1996 was not only a major achievement for Mabey (as well as a commercial success), it asserted the cultural importance of Britain's native flora. In it, he demonstrated how even in an age of relentless urbanisation, a nation does cling to its trees and plants as symbols of an elusive sense of national identity. As would be expected, his Selected Writings is a treasure, even for his admirers who have been reading him for years, whether in the pages of BBC Wild- life, the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday or the Sunday Times.
The forty-nine pieces gathered here are divided into six sections. One of the strongest themes is that of change. Memory, observations, fact and the abiding presence of the work of John Clare and Hardy, all are mingled in his work. In several of the essays, he returns to places he first knew as a boy. In "Richard Mabey's Hertfordshire" his laconic common sense tempers his descriptions of his native county. Many will applaud his respectful debunking of the status of the beech among the great trees of England. Although a romantic, Mabey seldom falls victim to nostalgia. "The trouble with Hertfordshire," he writes, "is that it has a low profile and earns low royalties. There is no quintessential county landscape, no great range of hills or heaths. There is no Hertfordshire cheese, sheep, hot-pot or pudding . . . You will need to talk to a life-long inhabitant for first-hand memories of an authentic local industry. Hertfordshire persons don't even have any oddball qualities for people to make jokes about." Thus apparently deconstructed and laid bare, his native county yet features throughout this volume, as Mabey succeeds in showing that a landscape need not be unusual or unique to be interesting.
Far too often dismissed as too pretty, the English landscape presents dramatic contrasts. Indeed, Mabey's diary entries faithfully record the capricious menace of its weather when he is writing about a bleak June spent filming in the Yorkshire Dales, a limestone region in which the glories of the scenery are frequently countered by the dangers.
One of the finest pieces here features the Breckland, the strange wasteland section of the Norfolk-Suffolk borders which has been described as "a vast Arabian desert". Much of the essay is clear-eyed reportage. "There is no avoiding the fact that the Breckland is a prime home-grown example of what deforestation can lead to," he observes, adding that "up to a couple of hundred years ago it was the nearest thing Britain had to a dust-bowl".
His observations are based on fact, historical research and recent scientific finding, but this does not mean he is blind to "the tree pipits doing their melodramatic free-fall song-flights". The many faces of Norfolk feature in several of the pieces, as does the elusive quality of Dorset. Among the many services Mabey provides in this volume is his gentle but persuasive emphasis on the rich variety of Britain's geography.
Also there, among a sharp, perceptive piece on the management of the New Forest - in which he acknowledges that its tough native ponies play a vital role in the Forest's ecosystem - are travelogues from France, Spain and Crete, and a superb account of his relationship with the Burren, Ireland's limestone kingdom, "this place of incongruity and optical illusion". The piece on the Burren is an atmospheric narrative which draws on visits separated by some fifteen years.
Elsewhere, when recalling Tony Evans, a photographer friend, now dead, with whom he visited the Burren, he writes that "during our long stay . . . Tony took perhaps his most evocative picture, of burnet roses around a flat limestone rock. In the rock is a puddle, like a tiny turlough, and on its deadcalm surface a reflection of the sun is surrounded by white rose petals. It is a picture of the whole Burren in miniature."
Mabey the naturalist explores London wildlife when he traverses that city; in another essay, he celebrates the enduring, artful greenery of Oxford.
One of the most pressing issues confronting environmentalists is the spread of urbanisation. This is addressed in an example from a village in which some inhabitants are eager for change, while others want to preserve their traditional way of life. Meanwhile commuters who have moved in and want the advantages of both country life and city living add to the dilemma.
No one with an interest in trees will have forgotten the devastation caused by the freak, and bizarrely selective, hurricanes of 1987 and 1992, both of which destroyed generations of great trees. Mabey, who has always been impressive on trees, particularly the yew, writes movingly about the emotion caused by the sight of the mighty fellings as day broke on the mornings following both gales, when a nation mourned its lost giants. Honest, perceptive, informed, and humble before the history nature represents, Mabey is a gentle wonder, and so is this book.