Ian Mercer – författare

New Naturalist Dartmoor explores the complex and fascinating history of one of southern England's greatest National Parks, an area of enormous interest to naturalists and tourists alike.Dartmoor is said to be the loneliest wilderness in England. This has been said more often of Dartmoor than any other part of our country. Traditionally in the world of fiction as well as that of fact, Dartmoor has been renowned as a vast and empty moorland area, the property of nature rather than of man. It has always been the public's idea of a lonely place.Not many generations ago it was regarded with a certain amount of awe and nowadays it is one of our most important centres of recreation, an island in upland England of abundant interest to the naturalist. In 1951 it became a National Park, one of the first of several places that have been so designated in Great Britain, helping to conserve and promote both its beauty and cultural heritage.Spanning miles of open moorland, whilst also hiding small secluded river valleys, rare plants and endangered birds, Dartmoor is a place of variety, and has evolved in the public's mind from a forbidding place to that of romance and mystery.In the latest addition to the long-running New Naturalist series, Ian Mercer sets out to explore every aspect of this important area of southern Devon. Focusing not only on its extensive history and physical landscape, but also its cultural place within Great Britain, this is both a comprehensive and engaging look at the wild and rugged landscape that has inspired so many poets, painters and musicians over countless centuries.

All landscapes are built on rock: from hard stone for building with, to the softest clay or sand. Each piece of rock is a storehouse of prehistorical information; even a simple pebble from the garden has its own complex tale to tell. Geology is the great detective science that can unlock these secrets. In this entertaining and eye-opening book, the authors take a deep dive – quite literally – into their home county of Essex.We are all living in an ice age, an ongoing event that has hugely affected Essex over the last 3 million years. Yet this county was born more than 500 million years ago. Our story begins when the land we know as Essex was part of a large continent close to the South Pole, tracing the geological processes that continue to shape the countryside around us. The form of the land, boulders on village greens, road cuttings, cliffs, stones in church walls – they can all bring geology to light in unexpected and fascinating ways.Aimed at a general readership with no scientific background but equally appealing to the seasoned geologist, chapters progress from fundamentals to intricate details of geological investigations and cutting-edge research. Richly illustrated with photographs and colour diagrams, here the geology of a county is visualised and brought to life as never before, along with pertinent environmental insights in the light of climate change that is happening now.