Summer is traditionally a time of plenty, of warmth; a time to celebrate abundance. And so Stephen Rutt sets out to explore the natural world during its moment of fullest bloom. Butterflies and dragonflies add colour to his days; moths and bats lift the warm nights; swallows, nightjars and wood warblers fill the forests and skies.
What Stephen notices too, however, are the many ways in which the season is becoming deranged by a changed and changing climate: the wrong birds singing at the wrong time; August days as cold as February; the creeping disturbances that we may not notice while nature still has some voice.
The Eternal Season is both a celebration of summer and a warning of the unravelling of this beautiful web of abundant life. It sings with love and careful observation, with an eye on all that we might lose – but also save.
‘Here is nature in all its glory . . . Rutt’s account of this time is poetic, clean, spare, compelling, leavened with wry humour and urgency.’ BBC Wildlife
‘[A] passionately argued and provocative book.’ The Countryman
‘As you progress into the text you see it pull away from the crowd to deliver something more meaningful, something that lingers longer . . . A well-written, accessible and engaging book containing some real gems.’ BTO News
‘Elegant, vivid, thoroughly absorbing . . . strikes the perfect balance between celebrating the natural world and sounding a realistic warning about the damage we continue to wreak on it. All in all, a treat.’ Lev Parikian, author of Into the Tangled Bank
‘An exquisitely observed celebration of summer and of the way in which the season is increasingly disorientated.’ Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller ?
