Kevin Parr – författare

Discover the seasons and stories of the forest in this beautifully illustrated journey through a woodland year.

The ancient Celts lived by and worshipped the moon. While modern, digital life is often at odds with nature – rubbing against it rather than working in harmony with it – is there something to be said for embracing this ancient way of being and reconnecting to the moon’s natural calendar?January’s Quiet Moon reflects an air of melancholy, illuminating a midwinter of quiet menace; it was the time of the Dark Days for the ancient Celts, when the natural world balanced on a knife edge. By May, the Bright Moon brings happiness as time slows, mayflies cloud and elderflowers cascade. Nature approaches her peak during a summer of short nights and bright days – this was when the ancient Celts claimed their wives and celebrated Lugnasad. With the descent into winter comes the sadness of December’s Cold Moon. Trees stand bare and creatures shiver their way to shelter as the Dark Days creep in once more and the cycle restarts.In The Quiet Moon, Kevin Parr discovers that a year of moons has much to teach us about how to live in the world that surrounds us – and how being more in tune to the rhythms of nature, even in the cold and dark, can help ease the suffering mind.

‘It wasn’t just cats on the prowl. There were other animals that seemed too exotic or dangerous to go unnoticed and some were not simply surviving but thriving. Mammals such as the wild boar, once driven to extinction but now reestablished following escapes and illegal releases; a colony of yellow-tailed scorpions that have scuttled since Victorian times; wallabies, as far away from their native range as they could possibly get, bouncing around dale and moor … How exciting would it be to go and try to see some of them for myself?’Many are unaware that scorpions, Aesculapian snakes, eagle owls, wallabies and many more unusual non-native species are living and breeding in the British Isles – but here they are.In An Unnatural History of Britain nature writer Kevin Parr travels the length and breadth of the country seeking out these rare creatures and exploring the myths and folklore that have emerged around them along the way.

LONGLISTED FOR THE INAUGURAL RICHARD JEFFERIES AWARD FOR NATURE WRITING‘A master of the landscape and a celebration of a life lived with the wild’ – Dan Kieran, author of The Idle Traveller‘[Parr] writes beautifully ... gentle, often elegiac ... There is much pleasure to be taken from this book’ - Tom Fort, Gamefisher‘Yet, sitting here at the beginning of that journey, I realise there is a different path I must follow. This entails not a simple exploration of a single river, or the fish I might catch from it, but an understanding of what it is that makes someone an angler – what it is that makes me an angler. … Although I don’t always need a rod in my hand to feel as if I belong by the riverside, it was angling that helped open my eyes. And as I sit here, I can hear the river calling me, bubbling up from deep underground, sharing its secrets.’From childhood memories of an Exmoor stream and of the Itchen during difficult teenage years, to finding solace on the banks of the Kennet and the catharsis of a storm on the Jurassic Coast, Rivers Run is a love letter from Kevin Parr to the rivers and waterways that shaped him. It is a book about fishing. But it’s also a book about living, surviving the difficult times and remembering to breathe.‘A moving treatise on the way we deal with the dark things that life throws at us’ - BBC Countryfile magazine‘I very much enjoyed this book ... thoughtful and interesting’ - Mark Avery, author of Inglorious