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Environmental Ethics in Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner

In Our Time podcast

While Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is likely a poem that most of us studied in our school years, it is not perhaps one that we actively think about as we go about our daily lives, or that we would necessarily reference in regard to matters of contemporary conservation or environmental ethics. However I suspect that I now shall be re-reading it, and in a much more nuanced and better informed manner since listening to the 4 March 2021 podcast episode of BBC Radio 4’s superb In Our Time program

Of Black Swans and Purple Squirrels

Bear Markets and Beyond cover

As most any naturalist with a healthy interest in words does, I’ve long enjoyed the past-time of venereal  – or collective – nouns. From the traditional, widely known, and more-or-less official – an exhalation of larks, a school of fish, a pack of wolves – to the playful and decidedly unofficial – an aroma of […]

Mark Posts a Two-Fer

English Pastoral

Mark Avery must have been somewhat busy this past week, as he only posted two books for this week’s Sunday Book Review – and the two books he chose are as different as cheese and chalk.

Autumn Arachnids

Common Spiders NA cover

As the temperatures turn cooler here in the northern hemisphere, I’ve begun to receive an increased number of communications regarding the identities of spiders that were recently noticed in someone’s house. They’ve likely always been there, of course – spiders that commonly live out-of-doors don’t generally seasonally migrate indoors as autumn approaches, it’s just that […]

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