Book review: ‘The Book of Nightingales’ by Richard Mabey

Short monograph on the role of nightingales in western culture.

The Book of Nightingales is a strange, yet entertaining book dealing with the nightingale in western culture - especially poetry. Interspersed with his cultural analyses are Mabey's personal reminiscences of encounters with these drab yet remarkable birds.

Living outside the nightingale's natural (and declining) British range, I have never had the fortune to hear a nightingale in the flesh. This book made it abundantly clear that my life is the poorer for this.

Writer and photographer Richard Carter, FCD is the founder of the Friends of Charles Darwin. He lives in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire.Website • Facebook • Twitter • Newsletter • Books

Buy my book: On the Moor: Science, History and Nature on a Country Walk
“…wonderful. Science and history and geography and evolution and culture all tangled up in musings while walking about the moors around Hebden Bridge.”—PZ Myers
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