Dragonflight

Marianne Taylor is a writer, illustrator, photographer and editor. As a child she became passionately interested in first butterflies and then birds and, as the child of two librarians, one of whom later became a secondhand bookseller, she was as bookish as she was bird-obsessed. A couple of decades later, these factors helped her land her first job in publishing, as editorial assistant at the bird book publishers Christopher Helm. She worked in publishing for seven years, before taking the plunge as a freelancer in 2007. Since then she has written more than a dozen books for adults and children on a range of natural history subjects.

A charming new book by Marianne Taylor, that charts her two-year quest to see all 40 British dragons and damsels. She got within three - thwarted by last year's wettest summer on record. Along the way she met badgers, foxes, hares, ospreys and butterflies galore and showed that this densely populated island still has plenty of magical wild places.The stars are the dragons and their bizarre lifestyle. -- John Ingham The Daily Express A splendid search for all of Britain's dragonflies and damselflies -- Simon Barnes The Times The book is an account of of the author's travels in search of dragons and damsels...the reader is soon captivated by her thoughts and there were sections I could not put down. Highland News Group Dragonflight is more than mere clinical descriptions of handsome insects, it is a series of warm verbal paintings of some of our most charismatic wildlife. BBC Countryfile The combination of aquatic gargoyle nymphs and masterful aeronaut adults provides Taylor with a wealth of narrative and we are let through various watery landscapes, from lowland river and East Anglian Broad to moor mountain and coastal shingle in search of the adult flies ... Dragonflight is more than mere clinical descriptions of handsome insects, it is a series of warm verbal paintings of some of our most charismatic wildlife. -- Richard Jones BBC Wildlife