Fauna Britannica: The Practical Guide to Wild & Domestic Creatures of Britain: The Practical Guide to Wild and Domestic Creatures of Britain [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

In Fauna Britannica, Duff Hart-Davis manages to pull off a very difficult task admirably well. As his subtitle indicates this is a Practical Guide to Wild & Domestic Creatures of Britain, which attempts to describe the island's animals or at least some of them. The total count of different kinds of creatures, great and small that inhabit these Isles is immense, but the vast majority are very small in size. As a famous biologist once said, God must have been inordinately fond of beetles. So, for any such book it is inevitably a matter of selection.

Not unreasonably, the bigger animals come first and range from the badger through bats and whales to the Tamworth pig. There are birds aplenty and altogether these backboned animals take up three-quarters of the book, leaving the remaining quarter for fish, amphibians, reptiles and a small selection of invertebrate shellfish, insects and so on. One could quibble about omissions, for example no sea-urchins, but this is primarily a book about backboned animals. It would take another volume or two to do the rest justice. Almost all our beasts get a high quality photo plus an informative and interesting description with particularly interesting longer sections on domesticated animals and aspects of their history. This is fascinating stuff and lifts the book far beyond the average field-guide. Besides which it is far to big and heavy to cart about the countryside. Fauna Britannica is more your feet-up-in-front-of-a-good-fire kind of guide but nevertheless is also practical in the sense that it is a very useful reference for anyone interested in our sadly depleted wildlife. Hart-Davis includes an informed discussion of the thorny problem of accidentally or intentionally introduced or reintroduced animals; as he rightly says "even a creature as small and apparently harmless as an edible dormouse can become a nuisance in an alien environment".

Duff Hart-Davis is a well known British writer and journalist on country matters and consequently he manages to make his Practical Guide eminently readable and enjoyable. There is a useful appendix, listing organisations concerned with animals, and an excellent index. Fauna Britannica will provide many a happy hour of browsing with the reassuring thought that some of our previous inhabitants such as wolves, lions and bears are no longer lurking around the corner in the shrubbery. --Douglas Palmer

'FAUNA BRITANNICA is an important, and exciting, tour de force ... Readers will be stunned not only by the wealth of organised information but by the imaginative character of so much that is offered ... Clearly, Duff Hart-Davis isa thoroughly 'good egg' steeped in rural affairs to an awesome degree and a skilled scribe who has completed a Herculean task which few would have the courage to tackle. He and his publisher have fashioned a most noble volume of immense public value and deserve our warmest congratulations.' Lord Barber of Tewkesbury, COUNTRY ILLUSTRATED 'Hart-Davis approaches the subject as a practical countryman who has loved the countryside since he roamed the Chiltern Hills as a boy ... That good-humoured but hard-headed note is typical of Hart-Davis's approach ... He clearly loves the beauty of wild creatures, but he undrestands too the farmer's and the country sportsman's way of life. Many people will, I think, appreciate his very clear account of the different kinds of farm animal ... to my taste, Hart-Davis's is the more interesting and rewarding book' Derwent May, THE TIMES '...highly readable, skilfully researched andconstructed and beautifully illustrated ... it is the solid information and myriad fascinating details in this book which make it such a pleasure, not Hart-Davis's deft way with controversy ... this book is not only a serious achievement as a record and guide, it is a delight.' On Stefan Buczacki: ' The result is more populist and discursive, but less well-integrated and not so well written.' Ann Chisholm THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH '...FAUNA BRITANNICA is far beyond what it claims to be - a 'practical guide' to Britain's wild and domesticcreatures. It is more like a celebration and the author's passion for these animals is written all over it. He gives us the usual encyclopedic statisticsand fantastic pictures, but a great deal more besides - most importantly, the history of the British people's relationship with each species. Mythology and tradition become as significant as biology...' Michael Bond, NEW SCIENTIST(17/9/02) 'If you stride out into the countryside in a battered Barbour withan ancestral Purdey shotgun by your side, Hart-Davis is your man ... Darwin filtered through Tennyson ("nature red in tooth and claw") ... It's Hart-Davis who stands up for the sturdy poacher against centuries of 'repressive' gamelaws; who rails most fiercely against the squalid horror of the battery-fowlbusiness ... unlike Buczacki he covers farm and domestic animals. Absurdly, pedantic Buczacki investigates horse-mussels but not horses ... this is zoological correctness gone mad ... Buczacki's finical definitions and omissions can also - especially with horses - lead him to make an 'Equus aisnus' of himself.' Boyd Tonkin, THE INDEPENDENT (10/8/02) '..this gorgeous book... paints a vivid picture of the UK's animal life. Richly illustrated, each entry offers a potted history of each species and anecdotal tales. A fabulous book...' SAINSBURY'S MAGAZINE 'Huge, fascinating and a must for nature lovers 'The practical guide to wild and domestic creatures of Britain' is a beautifully illustrated reference tome that's a joy to dip into. Combining natural and social history, it raises some controversial issues too. Put it on the Christmas wish list.' CHOICE MAGAZINE COUNTRY LIVING magazine has featured FAUNA BRITANNICA in their September issue new 'Out & About' section with a competition. THE FIELD and COUNTRY HOUSE & HOME have run reviews in their September issues. Duff Hart-Davis has written an article for THE COUNTRYMAN and a featurefor the Blackwell's Christmas Catalogue 2002. Duff Hart-Davis has also done a very successful day of regional radio interviews and will be appearing at the Cheltenham Literary festival (Oct). Duff is to be interviewed for BBC RADIO 4's THE FOOD PROGRAMME on Sunday 6 Oct and is doing a Christmas Signing for