Description
Book SynopsisTim Dee has been a birdwatcher all his life. His first book,
The Running Sky (2009), described his first five birdwatching decades. In the same year he collaborated with the poet Simon Armitage on the anthology
The Poetry of Birds. Since then he has written and edited several critically acclaimed books:
Four Fields (2013), a study of modern pastoral, which was shortlisted for the 2014 Ondaatje Prize;
Ground Work (as editor, 2017), a collection of new commissioned writing on place by contemporary writers; and most recently,
Landfill (2018), a modern naturejunk monograph on gulls and rubbish. He left the BBC in 2018 having worked as a radio producer for nearly thirty years. He lives in three places: in a flat in inner-city Bristol, in a cottage on the edge of the Cambridgeshire Fens, and in the last-but-one house from the south western tip of Africa, at the Cape of Good Hope.
Trade ReviewThe Running Sky has the makings of a classic. It's beautifully written, extraordinarily vigilant, and very moving...as we read it, we learn a lot about ourselves as well as the fellow creatures flying through, over and around our own lives -- Andrew Motion
Its author has a forensic eye for detail and a gift for poetry...an intimate and erudite account... he
is in the front rank of contributors to the literature of natural history * Daily Telegraph *
Serious and playful...creates a
powerful and intensely poetic paean to what others have called the wonder of birds * Guardian *
A beautifully haunting and involving memoir. The writer's passion for birds becomes his way of expressing his whole relationship to landscape and history and family: unsentimental and urgently contemporary -- Tessa Hadley
Dee's extraordinary, beautifully written account of a life spent watching birds is a fine addition to the flourishing genre of British nature writing * Sunday Times *
