Nature Classics – serie

In mid to late March 1913, as the storm clouds of the Great War which was to claim his life gathered, Edward Thomas took a bicycle ride from Clapham to the Quantock Hills. The poet recorded his journey through his beloved South Country and his account was published as In Pursuit of Spring in 1914. Regarded as one of his most important prose works, it stands as an elegy for a world now lost. What is less well-known is that Thomas took with him a camera, and photographed much of what he saw, noting the locations on the back of the prints. These have been kept in archives for many years and will now be published for the very first time in the book. Thomas journeys through Guildford, Winchester, Salisbury, across the Plain, to the Bristol Channel, recording the poet's thoughts and feelings as winter ends.

In 1927, Ronald Lockley took a 21 year lease on the small island of Skokholm, just off the Pembrokeshire coast in South Wales. A keen ornithologist, he began studies of the bird life on the island, and on neighbouring Skomer, famous today for its puffins. In the 1930s he published two books about his life on the island, Dream Island (1930) and Island Days (1934), which are now combined in this one volume. Lockley was a hugely influential figure in natural history and was lauded by Sir Peter Scott and Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, who also used him as a character in his book The Plague Dogs. Today, Dream Island offers an insight into an extraordinary and influential figure, and strongly evoke his island life.