Search results for ""author brian jackman""

A new collection of award-winning journalist and author Brian Jackman's nature and travel writings from the past 40 years. This is a nationwide celebration of Britain's unspoiled coast and countryside, concentrating in particular on Britain's wildlife and the wild places in which its most spectacular species are found, but also touching on fishing, sailing and the way Britain's history has shaped the landscape. 'Wild about Britain is not a guidebook' says Brian Jackman. 'It's an extended love letter to the British countryside; a personal view covering more than four decades of travels in the wilder parts of Britain.' Complementing Brian Jackman's writing are a small number of illustrations from Jonathan Truss, one of the UK's leading wildlife artists who has twice won the Frozen Planet category of the BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year competition. What makes the British countryside so special is its chameleon quality - the way its character changes with every few miles. Sometimes it can change dramatically; elsewhere the landscape undergoes more subtle shifts; but every region has its own distinctive qualities and is possessed of its own special magic. Brian Jackman writes eloquently and evocatively, conjuring up the sights and sounds of everything from barnacle geese on the salt marsh of an Islay loch to star gazing on Exmoor, of a seascape of headlands, cliffs and wave-smashed rocks at Lands End, of eagles on the Ardnamurchan peninsula and the autumn rut in the New Forest. Ancient oaks, red kites, huge mirror carp, the oldest path in Britain and Border reivers are all included. As a pioneer of eco-tourism, Brian Jackman has been writing on these subjects for 40 years, first as a travel writer for The Sunday Times and currently for The Daily Telegraph. Although more widely known for his knowledge of African wildlife and safaris - he is the author of The Marsh Lions and Savannah Diaries - it is his love of the British countryside that has brought him most of his awards. From Cornwall to Hermaness and from East Anglia to the Welsh Marches, Wild About Britain showcases Jackman's writing at its best. Winner of the British Guild of Travel Writers Best Narrative Travel Book 2018.

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'Don't send him to Torremolinos; it's not his kind of tundra.' Such was the mantra of The Sunday Times when considering assignments for Brian Jackman, for whom deserts, rain forests and mountain ranges have always been more enticing habitats. After decades spent travelling and writing about the places and wildlife that have inspired him, one of the world's most experienced naturalists has turned his focus onto the story of his inspirational life. 'This is no ordinary autobiography', he says. West with the Light sweeps through Jackman's wartime evacuation, grammar school, Soho jazz clubs of the '50s and the navy to a career in travel journalism to which his first marriage gave way before he found a new, true and more lasting love that abides to this day in his beloved rural Dorset. Beginning with memories of Edwardian London and the growth of suburbia, it provides a vivid portrayal of post-war travel and the rise of a new sort of tourism - ecotourism - set against the background of the most turbulent decades the world has ever known. Through it all shines Jackman's lifelong love of nature, instilled by childhood holidays in the West country and the stories that led to his passion for Africa and the big cats that that still walk through his life and dreams. Rippling across continents with Jackman's natural charm and hallmark stylish prose, his recollections include lively first-hand encounters with pioneering wildlife conservationists like George and Joy Adamson, Iain and Saba Douglas-Hamilton, Richard Leakey, Gavin Maxwell and Jonathan Scott. Travellers, wildlife enthusiasts, writers and anyone with a love of adventure will adore this book.

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Wild About Dorset is a new collection of nature writing from award-winning journalist and author Brian Jackman. Drawing on a decade's worth of monthly columns in his local parish magazine, Jackman paints a 'year in the life' of wildlife and wild places in West Dorset's Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), where he has lived for fifty years. A rumpled, tumbling world of green-gold hills, bordered by the Jurassic Coast's crumbling cliffs and melting away inland somewhere north of Beaminster, few corners of England are so rich in wildlife or so intensely rural. Arranged month-by-month, this book celebrates the only place in the British Isles that reminds Jackman of the lost countryside of his youth. Complementing Jackman's love letter are thirteen colour illustrations by celebrated nature artist Carry Akroyd, an award-winning member of the Society of Wildlife Artists. This is a book about nature - an account of natural history observations. Start the year by joining Jackman to watch sea trout and mating foxes, and close it with mistletoe and little owls. In between, watch peregrine falcons fly along Dorset's Jurassic Coast, marvel at mad March hares, glow-worms and dormice, and witness the fallow deer rut amid ancient oakwoods. This is also a book about place - celebrating the vigorously local and unequivocally rural even more deeply than his book Wild About Britain (also published by Bradt). Via Jackman's pen, explore the holloways (old sunken trackways) and lynchets (medieval field systems) that characterise West Dorset landscapes. Indulge in haymaking, beekeeping and the pleasure of log fires. Visit Powerstock, a thatched village straight out of Cider with Rosie. Marvel at Kingcombe, 'the farm that time forgot', which was declared a National Nature Reserve in 2021. And enjoy views from a giant Iron Age hillfort marking the geological divide between southern England's chalklands and the true West Country. Evocative, personal and authoritative, Wild About Dorset is a unique portrait of rural England's wildlife and landscapes, a breath of country air that will inspire reader to don walking boots and grab binoculars, then fall in love again with the great British countryside.

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