The Eye of the Wind by Peter Scott - Book Review

 

The eye of the wind.
by 

Peter Markham Scott

Sue's review on Goodreads

Mar 11, 2023  ·  edit

shelves: animals, biog-memoir, non-fiction

This book belonged to my mother, or my father, not sure which. I quite enjoyed reading it despite a large part being taken up by Peter Scott's wartime experiences as a junior naval officer. His very detailed exploits are written with concise language, sometimes belying the excitement and tragedy of the events he describes.

Early in life Peter Scott's main claim to fame was as son of the ill-fated Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott. Before WW2 Peter was making a living as a painter of portraits and wildfowl and I was initially mostly interested in his art and relationship with wildlife and the countryside. He was also a very keen sailor, to Olympic standards and flew light aircraft and gliders. He gives the impression of a person who couldn't sit still for long.

There's no avoiding the fact that as a young man Peter Scott was a hunter who spent much of his 20's working out the best ways to trap and shoot animals, mainly wildfowl. However later this leopard changed his spots, realising eventually that he couldn't reconcile his love for birds, especially geese, with the activity of regularly slaughtering them. His understanding of the birds habits and experience of luring and trapping them were put to good use studying them, ringing them and in collecting live ones which eventually formed the foundation of the Wildfowl Trust flocks at Slimbridge, which he set up in the early 1950's.

I remember being taken there as a child to meet the geese, my father was a huge fan. I know that we met the ne-ne's or Hawiian geese, a species which Scott was certainly responsible for saving from extinction. So hunter or not, he was a great conservationist.

For world Poetry Day - Passenger Pigeon

 

Passenger Pigeon

You dwelt in the vastness of the sky

with no fear of the hungry eagle,

he couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You swarmed across the wild prairies

no fear of the mighty bison,

those couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You  soared over the Rocky Mountains

no fear of the grey wolf pack,

that couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You  nested in the red oak trees

no fear of the long-legged bobcat,

she couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You  flapped above the people’s villages

no fear of the families in their tepees,

these couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You  flocked above the steaming railroads

no fear of the well-armed hunter,

but he destroyed you, all of your millions.

*

The Passenger pigeon was once thought to be the most numerous bird on earth. The last of them died in Cincinnati Zoo in 1912. Humans had named her Martha.

The Lives of the Surrealists by Desmond Morris - book review

 I will return to this book more than once, I'm sure. It contains brief but useful biographies of a number of the surrealists, 32 in all, compiled by an author who was one of them, albeit a late comer. Desmond Morris shows us that some very famous artists, including Francis Bacon, Henry Moore and Picasso, who are not generally described as surrealists were nonetheless closely engaged in surrealism. 

Morris was part of the British tranche of surrealism and personally knew many of those he writes about, giving the writing sometimes a humorous, gossipy quality. As an anthropologist and the author of The Naked Ape, he knows about we humans with our quirks and urges.. Some people have criticised this slightly irreverent take but he says himself, in his introduction, that his intention was not to contribute to the vast quantity of tomes on Art History, but to tell briefly the human lives of his chosen Surrealist artists, which he does in a readable and entertaining way. He's also been criticised for the inclusion of only one work of art by each artist. Anyone who has ever tried to compile such a book about artists will understand why he hasn't included more; getting permission to include works by known artists is incredibly difficult and printing good colour reproductions is expensive.  

Just a shame he didn't chose to write about a few more of the women involved in the movement. To include Roland Penrose with barely a mention of Lee Miller is impolite and to largely ignore such artists as Toyen, Ithyll Colquhoun, Dora Maar, Remedios Varo, Kay Sage and Claude Cahun - not to mention Frida Kahlo, which he doesn't - is almost inexcusable.

Granny Made Me An Anarchist by Stuart Christie - book review

 

  Granny Made Me An Anarchist

Sue's review

Dec 02, 2022  ·  edit

liked it

bookshelves: biog-memoir, non-fiction

Interesting and sometimes disturbing memoir of ideas, activism, establishment plots, political imprisonment and other events in the life of a young Glaswegian anarchist in the 1960's and 70's.
Those were times when so many young people really wanted things to change and didn't want to wait. I do know, I was there for some of it. Things certainly have changed, but not necessarily in all the ways which we hoped for.
Plenty of relevant detail in this well-researched, heartfelt and thoughtful book which anyone seriously interested in UK politics and activism in those times should read. This history isn't covered in conventional reports.

And the title is great!

Moab is my Washpot - autobiography by Stephen Fry - review

 

Sue's Reviews > Moab Is My Washpot

bookshelves: might-read-again, non-fiction, funny, biog-memoir

Four Stars - I don't know why only three of them appear below.

Stephen Fry is funny and rude, clever and incredibly knowledgeable. I know who he is, of course I do. He’s entertained me on the telly for three decades, but did I want to read his autobiography? Not especially, I don’t read that many biographies except of the artists I’m researching.

Stephen Fry is funny and rude, clever and incredibly knowledgeable. I know who he is, of course I do. He’s entertained me on the telly for three decades, but did I want to read his autobiography? Not especially, I don’t really read biographies except of the artists I’m researching.

However when I saw this salmon pink paperback on a bookseller’s shelf, I bought it for the cover. I might well have bought it even if I was quite unfamiliar with Stephen Fry and despite the obscure title. Who is Moab, why does he/she/they matter? And what in heaven or hell is a Washpot? Yes I guessed the reference was from the Old Testament, but I had no intention of re-reading that tome to find out.

My main reason for the purchase was because the cover was largely filled with the monstrous, wise, preposterously ugly but somehow charming visage of a bull elephant seal, with a proportionately tiny blackbird staring up his bulbous nose. An elephant seal, Lain name Mirounga angustirostris - there's my one bit of erudition. As a child I had seen one in Berlin Zoo, as far as I know Stephen never visited Berlin in his childhood. So why an elephant seal? Just why?

The autobiography encompasses the first 20 years of Fry’s life and no elephant seals are involved. It’s an intense, highly personal, self-deprecating book. He writes an eruditely meandering – or maybe I mean meanderingly erudite – and excruciatingly honest story.

He presents us with his family, who he basically loves but, especially as a teenager, refuses to get on with and who love him but find him often hard to comprehend. We see him in middle-class boarding schools, and how he coped with school life, not always well or honestly but mostly he coped, by using his wits to dodge the system and outwit authority. And we see his love life as his sexuality begins to emerge.

I did enjoy Stephen's book, it’s poignant, scathing, funny and engrossing, occasionally self indulgent bit I forgive him. I skimmed here and there, mostly through the meanderingly erudite sections. I don’t have the advantage of his classical education, if it is an advantage. The Washpot is mentioned in the afterword, as a metaphorical container for the author’s dirty linen, and I believe Moab was a sinner. But the vast elephant seal, I still have no idea because it looks nothing like him!

Will I read it again? I might , but probably only after I’ve read what comes in the next volume.

Garden Trees - the Fairweather Gardener

I have always planted trees in every garden I've had since student days, now in garden number four The first was a long, narrow, town garden, with an old wall all around the perimeter. We took down three laburnums and planted two plum trees so that was a net loss of trees, though I wasn't thinking in those terms at the time.. However the best thing in that garden was a massive, mature apple tree.  No idea what the variety was but it produced large red and green apples which were superb eaters or cookers.  

The second Garden wasn't so large and when we purchased it, the triangular back garden was unpromising, it consisted of a soggy, sloping lawn with concrete, North facing patio and the only trees were three whitebeam behind the sparse beech hedge, a couple of wild cherry and a lot of leylandii. 

When we sold after twenty-two years there were fewer leylandii, though we kept a hedge of them for the sparrows. But we'd planted lilac, two apples, a pear, hazel, stella cherry, morello cherry, damson, horse chestnut, two Norway spruce (ex-Christmas trees), two holly and no doubt some I've forgotten. Picture shows fruit trees in full blossom in April. 

Hawthorn had begun to occupy spaces in the beech hedge and more wild cherry had taken up residence behind the hedge. And out the back, the landowner had planted more native trees which we enjoyed watching grow into woodland as we lived there.  Our trees helped transform that garden from a slightly boggy area to a woodland edge garden which is what sold it! The purchaser wanted her kids to live with trees. 

In the next garden we took out a four-tree leylandii hedge which was too close to the building plus we needed to make a parking area. Then we took down a big ash tree and a laburnum which were in danger of pushing over the 8 foot high, stone retaining wall. We planted fruit trees, three apples - Cox's Orange Pippin, Braeburn and Egremont russet - also a Victoria plum, greengage, conference pear, stella cherry and apricot.

Where we are now, the back garden is just too small for so many trees. It already has an apple tree which is a very early producer and I think is a Worcester Pearmain. We've already finished harvesting the fruit - began end of July which is early even for Worcesters.  They don't keep well so the freezer is full of stewed apple. There's a rowan tree which began to also produce fruit in July, the weather was so hot and dry.  

We might plant a pear tree against the wall next to the rowan but need to improve the ground, there's a lot of rubble. And with deliberate optimism we've planted an olive tree, which is growing happily. Given the rate of climate change, we hope to harvest edible olives before the decade is out! 

The St Leonards' Writers

St Leonards-on-Sea -  Beach Huts 

My local writers' group, The St Leonards' Writers, of which I am currently the chair - which in this context means group leader - has after various changes of personnel and ethos, acquired a new website - www.Stleonardswriters.com 

Our new website is clear and uncomplicated which we wanted, and will hopefully attract a few new members to our friendly meetings. In the area? Do come and meet us or contact - https://stleonardswriters@outlook.com.

We are also on Facebook - (4) St Leonards Writers | Facebook

The site was made for us by Paul Gilbert, brilliant website and video producer at Welcome to Eventertainment.co.uk (lubbdupp.com)

Meet Gulliver, a great storyteller and our mascot.
He doesn't generally attend meetings.