William Blake still weaves his mystic spell
Philip Hoare considers the ageless, hypnotic appeal of the painter, poet, visionary and ‘one-man utopia’
The Coromandel coast under threat
The rich biodiversity of Chennai’s littoral is in imminent danger from toxic petrochemical industries, warns the ardent naturalist and activist Yuvan Aves
Whoever imagined that geology was a lifeless subject?
The shifting rocks of Earth’s crust are part of the planet’s ecology just as much as plants and animals, says Marcia Bjornerud – applying to geology the principle of universal connectivity
Little dynamos of life
Over the course of one midsummer’s day, Mark Cocker presents a startling picture of the breeding, feeding, fledging and migrating habits of these little dynamos of life
Fatal attraction
Hettie Judah describes how its various owners were plagued by bankruptcy, divorce, suicide, madness – and savaging by wild dogs
Thoroughly hooked
Trying to catch fish with rod and line is a pursuit that, for many, goes far beyond the pleasant passing…
The world on the rocks
Adam Nicolson is one of our finest writers of non-fiction. He has range — from place and history to literature…
Worlds of their own
Holiday islands, desert islands, love islands, islands of eternal youth, siren islands, islands filled with screaming demons. Of all the…
Not so brutish
When I studied anthropology back in the early 1980s, Neanderthals were still largely the bulk-browed brutes of yore, grunting in…
Silent witnesses
History is only as good as its sources. It is limited largely to what has survived of written records, and…
The restless spirit of the Enlightenment
Emily Thomas is a distinguished academic philosopher who has ‘spent a lot of time by herself getting lost around the…
History is made from ideas — but are ideas becoming history?
Wallace Stevens called it ‘the necessary angel’. Ted Hughes thought it ‘the most essential bit of machinery we have if…
![An English oak in a misty meadow at dawn [Getty]](https://spectator-australia-preprod.go-vip.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/oak_tree.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Why the British love the oak tree
Over the past couple of years, I’ve been planting up much of the pasture on our small Cornish farm with…
It’s not a wave’s crest, but its translucent interior that surfers dream of
Surfing has come of age. Like rock and roll, it was once strictly for young people, edgy and alternative and…
Creature comforts
As naturalist, educator and writer, John Lister-Kaye was for many years a voice in the wilderness. In 1976, when nature…
Following the fickle fish
Fish stories come in two varieties: the micro-version of a hundred riverside bars, blokeish boastings of rod-and-line tussles with individual…
Bogs and fogs
In his poem ‘Eden Rock’, Charles Causley conjures up a dreamy memory of a childhood picnic ‘somewhere beyond Eden Rock’.…
Ashes to ashes
The ash tree may lack the solidity of oak, the magnificence of beech or the ancient mystique of yew. In…
Modern-day Leviathans
If a time traveller were to arrive in our world from, say, 1514 — a neat half-millennium away — what…
