Timothy's Book: Notes of an English Country Tortoise [Paperback]

'Brilliant and audacious' Richard Mabey, author of Nature Cure 'A charming and most enjoyable work - Klinkenborg's prose is a pleasure to read.' Richard Adams, author of Watership Down This tortoise-eyed view of life - is a treat to readA" Financial Times

`This quaint and charming tortoise-eye-view of all the delights of the
Hampshire countryside is utterly enchanting.'

"Klinkenborg gives Timothy powers of observation equal to his owner's and a
stiff philosophical mindset, hard shell, charm and slow humour.'

`It's surreal, funny and sometimes achingly sad.'

`Klinkenborg has constructed probably the most comprehensive biography yet
of an 18th-century tortoise.'

[Timothy's] "stoic progress" is painstakingly described, both in White's systematic terms, and in Timothy's more poetic way...charming language

American author Klinkenborg is obviously steeped in White and has used his immense knowledge to produce a charming, fascinating book

An evocative study in time and lack of motion...charming...invites one to take stock of pleasures of the countryside

It is evocative, and elegantly, succinctly, beautifully written, full of wisdom and strangeness.

Written with precision...Klinkenborg captures the essence of how England's rural societies were

This is a wise, severe and unforgettable old tortoise's own short history of humanity. It is suitable for the "Telegraph"-to-"Attenborough" readership, for twitchers, ramblers and National Trusters, for readers of Richard Mabey's "Nature Cure", Richard Benson's "The Farm", "Horatio Clare", and "The Lore of the Land". Timothy, a wise and eloquent tortoise, has spent some fifty years amongst humans, living in their midst in the lovely Hampshire village of Selborne, the occasional object of study for his host, Gilbert White, whose letters famously comprise The Natural History of Selborne. But Timothy is inclined to study too. His observations of the natural world that surrounds him can match those of his master for aptness, precision, illumination and beauty - his gaze falls with equal aplomb on the flitting martins and swallows, trooping frogs, mating harvest mice, hares nibbling at the cabbage and, above all, on those 'tottering, stilt-gaited beasts', their instincts so derelict, who tower over Timothy and make their odd ways known to him. Who would guess that a tortoise marooned in the heart of old England could tell us so much?

VERLYN KLINKENBORG is the author of three previous books: Making Hay, The Last Fine Time and The Rural Life. He is on the editorial board of the New York Times, and he lives on a farm in upstate New York with his wife.