Little Toller Books

Book SynopsisAdrian Bell's travels through East Anglia and lowland Britain capture the character of the countryside before modern agriculture altered the landscape and changed forever the way we eat and live.

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Book SynopsisAsh is one of the most common trees in the British Isles - there are nearly as many ash trees as there are people. Perhaps this is why we take them for granted. Poets write of oak, yew, elm, willow, rarely ash. No books have been written about ash trees before. Yet ash is one of the most productive hardwoods in Europe. Its strength and elasticity are qualities our Neolithic ancestors recognised while building their tracks across the marshlands of Somerset. Ash has been used ever since, to build and warm homes, to feed livestock, to cure. Before steel it was used to make ploughs and rakes, wheel rims, boat frames, tent pegs and weapons. The human population is not alone finding sustenance and shelter in ash: woodpeckers bore nest holes into them, bats breed in veteran trees, insects, lichens, mosses and liverworts thrive on ash bark, as do hares and rabbits in winter. The first noticing of Ash Disease in 2012 brought this under-appreciated tree to our attention.In response, Oliver Rackham has written this first history and ecology of the ash tree, exploring its place in human culture, explaining Ash Disease, and arguing that globalisation is now the single greatest threat to the world's trees and forests. We cannot go on treating trees like tins of paint or cars to be traded around the world. Neither can we assume that planting a tree is, by default, a good thing. Industrial planting and irresponsible trade are already devastating the world's tree populations. The Ash Tree is Oliver Rackham's call for a radical shift in our attitude to trees - how we plant them, how we care for them after they are planted. There is no more urgent message for our times.

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Book SynopsisRivers are great workings of nature, time and geology. They have long been at the very centre of human culture, sustaining us with water, food, power and stories. Our thoughts flow like a river. A river's journey, from source to sea, is a metaphor for life. H.E. Bates's own journey began on the banks and in the waters of two contrasting Midland rivers. The River Nene's jumbled course and character, with its towpaths and locks and bridges, speaks of human industry on its journey to The Wash. The River Ouse, in contrast, with its wide meanders brimmed with reeds and smoky willows, rich in wildlife and wild flowers, is an uplifting, ephemeral water, a river of summer memories and flag irises, the blue pulse of kingfishers and pike lurking in weed-shadows. Peopled by his relatives and neighbours, both the Nene and the Ouse, however different, filled H.E. Bates's imagination with the wonderful stories and characters that make his writing so enjoyable.

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Book SynopsisNeil Sentance revisits his native Lincolnshire riverlands and fields, farms and market towns, to explore the history of his family and the landscape which shaped them. But this is not a lament for a lost world. Peopled by characters forgotten by history, it celebrates the countryside with a rare combination of lyricism and muddy realism. Water and Sky collects together Neil Sentance's 'Scenes from the Waterside', a sequence of essays which first appeared on the Caught by the River website between 2010 and 2013. Water and Sky is an original and haunting blend of nature writing, memoir and historical fiction.Trade Review"A marvellous and haunting sequence ... It is wonderful to read such experiment of voice, tone and vision." ROBERT MACFARLANE "The lyricism of Sentance's scenes of rural life is at times reminiscent of Ronald Blythe; the figures that step into these vignettes are etched with the same respectful and gritty elegance, their voices are quiet, tough and honest." TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT "The river is a perfect wet and sinuous thread to tie this very engaging book together, as well as a perfect metaphor for its deeper yet subtle intentions. It would be difficult to over praise it, except that shouting loudly and enthusiastically would seem crass in its company and counter to its lovely mellow, yet unsentimental tone that lights it from within." TIM DEE

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Book SynopsisIn 1927, Ronald Lockley took a 21 year lease on the small island of Skokholm, just off the Pembrokeshire coast in South Wales. A keen ornithologist, he began studies of the bird life on the island, and on neighbouring Skomer, famous today for its puffins. In the 1930s he published two books about his life on the island, Dream Island (1930) and Island Days (1934), which are now combined in this one volume. Lockley was a hugely influential figure in natural history and was lauded by Sir Peter Scott and Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, who also used him as a character in his book The Plague Dogs. Today, Dream Island offers an insight into an extraordinary and influential figure, and strongly evoke his island life.

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Book SynopsisA century ago woodlands were at the heart of daily life. Trees and hedgerows, copses and spinneys provided wood-fuel, thatch and bedding, woodland pasture for pigs and cattle, medicine from tree bark and a wild harvest of nuts and fruit for the home. But the role of woodlands has been in decline in the last two centuries, drifting ever further from our modern lives. Yet there is no other landscape in the British Isles that matches the complexity and variety of life in a woodland, above and below ground.And while sheltering wildlife, woods continue to enrich our language, feed our imagination and still have the power to transform us, literally and metaphorically. Woodlands have not only inspired folktales, music, novels, visual art and poetry, they are also finding new uses in healthcare and as outdoor classrooms.Arboreal is a landmark publication of new writing from woodlands across the UK and beyond. In memory of the great historical ecologist Oliver Rackham, the book gathers contributions from a variety of voices - novelists, teachers, poets, botanists, artists, architects and foresters - to explore why woods matter and mean so much.Table of ContentsIntroduction - South Mead Coppice - Adrian Cooper,Inshriach - Inshriach Bothy - Kathleen Jamie, Bird Song - Hannah's Wood - Jay Griffiths, Another Look at Glennamong - Nephin Beg - Sean Lysaght, Hidden Places - The Lincolnshire Wolds - Fiona Stafford, Arborotopia - New Forest - Philip Hoare, Chanterelles - Pankhurst Forest - Evie Wyld, Why Woods Matter - Badby Woods - Fiona Reynolds, Forest of Eyes - Burnham Beeches - Paul Kingsnorth, Speaking Wood - Cae'n-y-coed - David Nash, Princess Forest - Coille Na Bana Phrionnsa - Alec Finlay, Medieval Survivor - Chalkney Wood - Simon Leatherdale, Don't Look Back - Piles Copse - Gabriel Hemery, Thinning - Kingsettle Wood - Robin Walter, The Ramsbury Elm - Ramsberry Village - Peter Marren, Two Storms - Tedworth Square - William Boyd, Sand Forest - Tentsmuir Forest - Jim Crumley, Wood Woes - Up the Forest! - Sue Clifford, Ash - Farnley Estate - Simon Armitage, Nine Oaks - Curridge Village - Adam Thorpe,Trunk - Spinney Wood - Jackie Kay, City, Trees, Water - Avon Gorge - Helen Dunmore, Return to Ruskin Land - Wyre Forest - Neil Sinden, Heartwood - Windsor Hill Road - Tobias Jones, Cusop Dingle - Dulas Brook - Nina Lyon, The Gypsy Stone - Epping Forest - Will Ashon, The Green Stuff - Wandlebury Wood - Ali Smith, Forest Fear - Wood of Cree - Sara Maitland, Thwaite - Ulpha Fell - Richard Skelton, On the 7.46 - Shrewsbury to Crewe - Paul Evans, Alison - West Sussex Downs - Madeleine Bunting, Yggdrasil in Shetland - Lea Gardens - Jen Hadfield, What is a Tree? - Stump Cross - Germaine Greer, Laburnum Time - B13 - Zaffar Kunial, The Common Dean - The Edge - Alan Garner, Searching for Natural Woodland - Lady Park - George Peterken, Woodcock - Wicken Fen - Tim Dee, Taking Root - Moonshine Wood - Piers Taylor, Discovering the Spinney - Spinney Wood - Deb Wilenski, Rackham's Treasure - Merthen Wood - Philip Marsden, Still Lives - Berkhamsted Common - Richard Mabey

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Book SynopsisAsh is one of the most common trees in the British Isles - there are nearly as many ash trees as there are people. Perhaps this is why we take them for granted. Poets write of oak, yew, elm, willow, rarely ash.No books have been written about ash trees before. Yet Ash is one of the most productive hardwoods in Europe. Its strength and elasticity are qualities our Neolithic ancestors recognised while building their tracks across the marshlands of Somerset. Ash has been used ever since, to build and warm homes, to feed livestock, to cure. Before steel it was used to make ploughs and rakes, wheel rims,boat frames, tent pegs and weapons. The human population is not alone finding sustenance and shelter in Ash: woodpeckers bore nest holes into them, bats breed in veteran trees, insects, lichens, mosses and liverworts thrive on ash bark, as do hares and rabbits in winter. The first noticing of Ash Disease in 2012 brought this underappreciated tree to our attention.In response, Oliver Rackham has written this first history and ecology of the ash tree, exploring its place in human culture, explaining Ash Disease, and arguing that globalisation is now the single greatest threat to the world's trees and forests. We cannot go on treating trees like tins of paint or cars to be traded around the world. Neither can we assume that planting a tree is, by default, a good thing. Industrial planting and irresponsible trade are already devastating the world's tree populations. The Ash Tree is Oliver Rackham's call for a radical shift in our attitude to trees - how we plant them, how we care for them after they are planted. There is no more urgent message for our times.

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Book SynopsisJohn Fowles' writing life was dominated by trees. From the orchards of his childhood in suburban Essex,to the woodlands of wartime Devon, to his later life on the Dorset coast, trees filled his imagination and enriched his many acclaimed and best-selling novels.Told through his lifelong relationship with trees, blending autobiography, literary criticism, philosophy and nature writing, The Tree is a masterly, powerful work that laid the literary foundations for nature-as-memoir, a genre which has seen recent flourishings in Roger Deakin's Wildwood, Richard Mabey's Nature Cure, Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways and Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk.As lyrical and precise as his novels, The Tree is a provocative meditation on the connection between the natural world and human creativity, and also a rejection of the idea that nature should be tamed for human purpose. Now, nearly forty years after its first publication, Little Toller is proud to republish this classic book as a special hardback, featuring a new foreword by William Fiennes and especially commissioned wood engravings,in the spirit of The Man Who Planted Trees.This edition will be an important addition to Fowles' published works and appeal to the growing audience for new nature writing as a classic of the genre.

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Book SynopsisFirst published in 1932 and written in simple, direct prose, Farmer's Glory is a portrait of a farming life in southern England and in western Canada, and is a model of the genre: warm and humorous as well as an astute and unflinching account of the hardships of a farming life. Introduced, in this new, edition by James Rebanks, bestselling author of The Shepherd's Life.Trade Review"A thing of beauty" Compton Mackenzie

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Book SynopsisIn his haunting debut, Water and Sky, published in 2014, Neil Sentance explored the history of his family and the landscape which shaped them. Ridge and Furrow continues the project to chart in prose the voices of a seldom recorded people and place. From the long shadows of war and want, to facing the great changes to rural life in the twentieth century, to first forays into a world beyond the flatlands of Lincolnshire, the book delicately portrays the dreams of lone, and often lonely, figures in one family's history. Ridge and Furrow melds memoir and fiction, place and nature writing, told with characteristic lyricism and muddy realism.

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Book SynopsisThe Helford River, Cornwall is a place of wonder and delight: one of the very few places in England where ancient woodland meets the sea. "This is oak country, and the oaks have that surprising variety of size and shape that only Cornwall and Devon oaks can offer. Smooth wooded hillsides, subtly mottled with the different greens or browns of individual oak-trees, sweep down to high-water mark." So begins Oliver Rackham's book covering 25 woods, predominantly in the north of the Lizard peninsula, including: Bonallack, Calamansack, Devichoys, Grambla, Gweek, Merthen, Reskymmer, Trelowarren, Tremayne and Treverry. He brings to life the curious industrial and cultural history of this unique area, and shows how these woods have survived and what the future may have in store. Illustrated throughout with photographs, maps and diagrams, this forms the second volume in the regional series The Ancient Woodlands of Britain. This book is published in collaboration with the Woodland Trust.

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Book SynopsisKing of Dust is a stonemason's personal journey through the landscapes of south-west England and the sculpture which first inspired him to pick up tools: the Romanesque. In the early years of the 21st century, mentally exhausted, the archaeologist Alex Woodcock carved a stone for the first time and realised how much more there was to learn about the subject from which he had made his life's work. Determined to understand the work by making and carving, as well as theoretically, he retrained as a stonemason and spent several years working at Exeter Cathedral. Ten years after that first carving a move to Cornwall prompted an urge to re-explore the little known Romanesque (12th century) carvings of the south-west. King of Dust follows a year of these wanderings, being both an archaeology of the images and a meditation on learning the craft. Ultimately it is about the power of medieval art to transform a life.

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Book SynopsisIn the depths of winter in 1705 the young Johann Sebastian Bach, then unknown as a composer and earning a modest living as a teacher and organist, set off on a long journey by foot to Lubeck to visit the composer Dieterich Buxterhude, a distance of more than 250 miles. This journey and its destination were a pivotal point in the life of arguably the greatest composer the world has yet seen. Lubeck was Bach's moment, when a young teacher with a reputation for intolerance of his pupils' failings began his journey to become the master of the Baroque. More than three hundred years later, the writer Horatio Clare set off to recreate this walk, following in Bach's footsteps. The result of this journey is Something of his Art, an imaginative evocation of what the twenty-year-old composer would have seen and felt on his long journey is a sustained visualisation of the landscape, light and wildlife of early eighteenth century northern Germany. Bach becomes Clare's walking companion, a vestigial but real presence, as he acutely observes the season and places he passes through.Trade Review"Clare's pilgrimage has a vigour, curiosity and vivid emotional range that engagingly summons the spirit of Johann Sebastian." Jane Shilling, Evening Standard "Clare has a fine eye for the character of the landscape through which he travels." Richard King, author of The Lark Ascending "The evocative writing... really makes you walk each step with him." Last Word Book Review "...a book of great erudition, concision and depth" Charlie Connelly, The New European

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Book SynopsisDates are invented things. Nothing in nature decrees that today is today. But for millennia humans have divided time into portions, and given those portions names which are shared widely across cultures, creating a common agreement on the date. This convention is useful in practical ways: we can make arrangements and can communicate time elapsed or time ahead. But the calendar also makes a certain kind of truth and establishes that today is today. As calendars and almanacs developed, art from their specific time and place was naturally incorporated. In this small book showcasing the finest and most interesting art that has gone into almanacs, from the eight century onwards, Alexandra Harris brings in everything from Benedictine calendars to Old Moore's Almanack.

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Book SynopsisLiverpool is a city of ghosts. Through the centuries, millions have lived here or come to find a new life, and found safe harbour. More than any other city in Britain its history resonates in the buildings, landscapes and stories that have seeped into the lives of its inhabitants. n Ghost Town, Jeff Young takes us on a journey through the Liverpool of his childhood - down back alleys and through arcades, into vanished tenements and oyster bars, strip tease pubs and theatres. We watch as he turns from schoolboy truant into an artist obsessed with Kafka, Terence Davies and The Fall. Along the way he conjures ghosts and puts hexes on the developers who've ruined the city of his dreams. Layering memoir, history, photography and more this is a highly original approach to this great city.Trade Review‘A stunningly beautiful book about the ways time, memory and life shape and change cities, families and all of us.’ Costa Book Award Judges, 2020. ‘What distinguishes this book is Young’s poetic expression of memory – its uncertainty, fluidity and inherent ghostliness.’ Gareth E Rees, Unofficial Britain. ‘An evocation of a world fast disappearing but never forgotten.’ Ade Blackburn, Caught by the River. ‘The memoir has a flinty realism, but the prose is sonorous, lyrical, sensual.’ Paula Byrne, The Times

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Book SynopsisDuring the early 1970s Richard Mabey explored crumbling city docks and overgrown bomb-sites, navigated inner city canals and car parks, and discovered there was scarcely a nook in our urban landscape incapable of supporting life. The Unofficial Countryside is a timely reminder of how nature flourishes against the odds, surviving in the most obscure and surprising places. Originally published in 1973 this landmark book was described by Iain Sinclair as 'a proper reckoning, the Domesday Book of a topography too fascinating to be left alone.' This beautiful new edition forms part of the Richard Mabey library, published to celebrate the author's 80th birthday and has a cover by the artist Michael Kirkman.

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Book SynopsisIn 1987 the Great Storm that ravaged southern England felled millions of trees, and prompted a reappraisal of the arboreal in our lives. In Beechcomings Richard Mabey set out to uncover our relationship with trees, and specifically the beech, their significance in nature and meaning in folklore. First published in 2007 this book was widely praised and described by Kathleen Jamie in the Guardian as 'Refreshing, droll, politically alert, occasionally self-mocking, he has the enviable ability both to write historical overview and also to slip into the woods like a dryad, bringing us back to the trees themselves.' This new edition forms part of the Richard Mabey Library, published to mark the author's 80th birthday, and includes a cover by the artist Michael Kirkman.

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Book SynopsisWe Came by Sea is the untold story of the small boats crisis, a story of the volunteers who help thousands of refugees in Calais and of lifeboat crews running one of the biggest search and rescue operations of all time. It is a journey through an unexplored Britain which deserves to be celebrated.

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