#356: Natural History Reading List #19: Fen, Bog and Swamp

One of my favourite books - I have a very nice compact edition with sailing ropes on the spine and cover - is 'The Shipping News' by Annie Proulx.

A more recent book is 'Fen, Bog and Swamp', subtitled as 'A short history of peatland destruction and its role in the climate crisis'.

It covers a great deal of ground, and starts with some useful definitions of the distinction between the three terms, which some people might feel can be conflated. 

There are differences between these three landscape (and habitat) types, and the use that people make of them. The index also provides a wealth of links to useful websites.

This Guardian review clearly explains why this should be on the shelf of any GCSE Natural History reading list / departmental library.

"Proulx conjures up the lost landscape, teeming as it was with eels and sturgeon, beavers and water voles, ospreys and cranes and populated by an unmourned fen people who “poled through curtains of rain, gazed at the layered horizon, at curling waves that pummelled the land edge in storms”. But for all her sadness at the destruction of our wetlands and what she calls “the awfulness of the present”, perhaps what’s most interesting about the book is her refusal to engage in the usual left versus rightpolitical debate."

We are all complicit in this destruction of the natural world.

My copy was borrowed from the Norfolk Library Service, but I shall be purchasing a copy 

Hardback, 196pp - paperback version now available.

ISBN: 978-0-00-853439-4