Richard Mabey

“[A] witty and beguiling meditation on weeds and their wily ways….You will never look at a weed, or flourish a garden fork, in the same way again.”—Richard Holmes, author of The Age of Wonder “In this fascinating, richly detailed book, Richard Mabey gives weeds their full due.”—Carl Zimmer, author of Evolution Richard Mabey, Great Britain’s Britain’s “greatest living nature writer” ( London Times ), has written a stirring and passionate defense of nature’s most unloved plants. Weeds is a fascinating, eye-opening, and vastly entertaining appreciation of the natural world’s unappreciated wildflowers that will appeal to fans of David Attenborough, Robert Sullivan’s Rats , Amy Stewart’s Wicked Plants , and to armchair gardeners, horticulturists, green-thumbs, all those who stop to smell the flowers.

The ideal portable companion, the world-renowned Collins Gem series returns with a fresh new look and updated material.This is the perfect pocket guide for aspiring foragers. Over 100 edible plants are listed, fully illustrated and described, together with recipes and other fascinating details on their use throughout the ages.Practical advice on how to pick along with information on countryside laws and regulations on picking wild plants helps you to plan your foray with a feast in mind.This is the ideal book for both nature lovers and cooks keen to enjoy what the countryside has to offer.

The Cabaret of Plants is a masterful, globe-trotting exploration of the relationship between humans and the kingdom of plants by the renowned naturalist Richard Mabey.A rich, sweeping, and wonderfully readable work of botanical history, The Cabaret of Plants explores dozens of plant species that for millennia have challenged our imaginations, awoken our wonder, and upturned our ideas about history, science, beauty, and belief. Going back to the beginnings of human history, Mabey shows how flowers, trees, and plants have been central to human experience not just as sources of food and medicine but as objects of worship, actors in creation myths, and symbols of war and peace, life and death.Writing in a celebrated style that the Economist calls “delightful and casually learned,” Mabey takes readers from the Himalayas to Madagascar to the Amazon to our own backyards. He ranges through the work of writers, artists, and scientists such as da Vinci, Keats, Darwin, and van Gogh and across nearly 40,000 years of human history: Ice Age images of plant life in ancient cave art and the earliest representations of the Garden of Eden; Newton’s apple and gravity, Priestley’s sprig of mint and photosynthesis, and Wordsworth’s daffodils; the history of cultivated plants such as maize, ginseng, and cotton; and the ways the sturdy oak became the symbol of British nationhood and the giant sequoia came to epitomize the spirit of America.Complemented by dozens of full-color illustrations, The Cabaret of Plants is the magnum opus of a great naturalist and an extraordinary exploration of the deeply interwined history of humans and the natural world.

Richard Mabey's descent into clinical depression was so annihilating that he could neither work nor play, nor sustain relationships with family or friends. He was drinking too much — and, worst of all, had lost all pleasure in the outside world. This remarkable book charts his gradual return to joyfulness.Richard Mabey had lived his whole life in the Chilterns. As a boy, he had tramped over the hills, bird-watching and botanizing. As a man, he purchased a large wood, which he studied in detail over a number of years. He drew on the experience of the Chilterns in all his writings. When depression dragged him under, he felt as if all this was lost, denied, destroyed. In Nature Cure he describes how he found the courage to change his habitat — from hills and chalk to watery fens and flat open spaces. He moved to Norfolk. He fell in love. Slowly, he started once more to look about him.Drawing always on the metaphors and myths of nature — the migration of birds, the magic of the changing seasons — he shows how the British countryside increased his understanding of what really matters and restored his sense of delight.

We have all grown increasingly aware of the potential -- and documented -- dangers of the chemical toxins that surround us. "The New Age Herbalist" is a compendium of healthy alternatives, an indispensable guide for contemporary natural living. Created by a team of experts, it offers: A full-color illustrated glossary of more than 200 herbs, describing their properties, active ingredients, and traditional uses around the worldA guide to using herbs for scent, for decoration, and even as chemical-free housekeeping aidsTips on using herbs for skin care and beauty, by making natural shampoos, lotions, soaps, and cosmeticsA review of culinary herbs, with some unusual recipes that use familiar herbs in delightful new waysAn examination of the growing science of herbal healing, discussing herbal remedies -- including stress relievers -- and the scientific research that validates themA complete herb gardening plan, with advice on choosing symbiotic herbs, designing and scheduling plantings, and preserving the harvest by freezing and dryingFascinating, authoritative, packed with information presented in a stunning visual style, "The New Age Herbalist" will be the home herb user's bible for years to come.

In his trademark style, Richard Mabey weaves together science, art and memoirs (including his own) to show the weather's impact on our culture and national psyche. He rambles through the myths of Golden Summers and our persistent state of denial about the winter; the Impressionists' love affair with London smog, seasonal affective disorder (SAD - do we all get it?) and the mysteries of storm migraines; herrings falling like hail in Norfolk and Saharan dust reddening south-coast cars; moonbows, dog-suns, fog-mirages and Constable's clouds; the fact that English has more words for rain than Inuit has for snow; the curious eccentricity of country clothing and the mathematical behaviour of umbrella sales. We should never apologise for our obsession with the weather. It is one of the most profound influences on the way we live, and something we all experience in common.

During the early 1970s Richard Mabey explored crumbling city docks and overgrown bomb-sites, navigated inner city canals and car parks, and discovered there was scarcely a nook in our urban landscape incapable of supporting life. The Unofficial Countryside is a timely reminder of how nature flourishes against the odds, surviving in the most obscure and surprising places. First published 1973 by William Collins Sons & Co.

We regard gardens as our personal dominions, where we can create whatever worlds we desire. But they are also occupied by myriads of other organisms, all with their own lives to lead. The conflict between these two power bases, Richard Mabey suggests, is a microcosm of what is happening in the larger world. In this provocative book, rooted in the daily dramas of his own Norfolk garden, Mabey offers a different scenario, where nature becomes an equal partner, a 'gardener' itself. Against a background of disordered seasons he watches his 'accidental' garden reorganising itself. Ants sow cowslip seeds in the parched grass. Moorhens take to nesting in trees. A spectacular self-seeded rose springs up in the gravel. The garden becomes a place of cultural and ecological fusion, and perhaps a metaphor for the troubled planet. This is vintage Mabey, maverick, intensely observed, and written with an unquenchable sense of wonder.

This landmark guide offers a comprehensive survey of the native and naturalized wild plants of England, Scotland, and Wales. Useful and delightful, it covers 1,000 species, including trees and ferns. More than a definitive work of natural history, however, it is also a virtual encyclopedia of living folklore, recording the role of wild plants in social life, the arts, customs, and landscapes. The information has been supplied by the people themselves, creating a unique national record of the popular culture, domestic uses, and social meanings of Britain's wild plants. Splendidly written by naturalist Richard Mabey and illustrated with 500 fine color photographs, Flora Britannica is an elegant testimony to the continuing relationship between nature and man.

Described as 'Britain's greatest living nature writer', Richard Mabey has revealed his passion for the natural world in eloquent stories for "BBC Wildlife Magazine". This definitive collection brings together his favourite pieces and presents a fascinating and inspiring view of the changing natural landscape in which we live. With marvellously observed detail, Mabey recalls following a barn owl he'd encountered while walking near his home in Norfolk, and talks of studying lichens through the lens of a Victorian microscope. Alongside tales of ants and hornets, swifts and pink-footed geese, we read about the hustle and bustle of his village in the heat of the summer, and his musings on the significance of Constable's "The Cornfield". Mabey's fascination lies in the way that we live and work within the nature that surrounds us. Peppered throughout with references to the heritage of nature writing, and great writers from Richard Jefferies and John Clare to Roger Deakin and Robert MacFarlane, "A Brush With Nature" is part memoir, part nature journal, part social history, giving us a unique insight into a nature lover's reflections over a quarter of a century.

In 1987, the greatest English storm for three centuries laid flat fifteen million trees across southern England and devastated a nation of tree-lovers. The storm marked a turning point in our perception of trees and a dawning realisation that they have lives of their own, beyond the roles and images we press on them.In Beechcombings Richard Mabey traces the long history of the beech tree throughout Europe, writing about the bluebells, orchids, fungi, deer and badgers associated with them, the narratives we tell about trees and the images we make of them. It is an engrossing, exciting, poetical and profound book that will stimulate debate about man's relationship with nature and enchant the reader.

Richard Mabey, one of Britain's leading nature writers, looks at the relationship between city and country, and how this brings out the power of nature - part of a series of twelve books tied to the twelve lines of the London Underground. Exploring the creation of Metro-land as a powerful symbol of the English ruralist myth, A Good Parcel of English Soil looks at how individuals become sensitized to nature in the hybrid environment of the suburbs. Richard Mabey grew up on the Metropolitan line, without the development of which - and its precursor, the Metropolitan Railway - in the early 20th Century, Metro-land could not have come into existence in the way we know it now, and here, through his own family's history, he explores the power of nature as it occurs even on the fringes of our cities.

In these elegant, short essays, revered nature writer Richard Mabey attempts to marry a Romantic's view of the natural world with that of the meticulous observations of the scientist. By Romanticism, he refers to the view that nature isn't a machine to be dissected, but a community of which we, the observers, are inextricably part. And that our feelings about that community are a perfectly proper subject for reflection, because they shape our relationship with it. Scientists eshew such a subjective response, wanting to witness the natural world exactly, whatever feelings subsequently follow. Our feelings are an extension of our senses - sight, taste, smell, touch and sound - and here, in a sextet of inspiring meditations, Mabey explores each sensory response in what it means to interact with nature. From birdsong to poetry, from Petri-dish to microscope, this is a joyful union of meandering thoughts and intimate memories.

When the pioneering naturalist Gilbert White (1720-93) wrote The Natural History of Selborne (1789), he created one of the greatest and most influential natural history works of all time, his detailed observations about birds and animals providing the cornerstones of modern ecology. In this award-winning biography, Richard Mabey tells the wonderful story of the clergyman - England's first ecologist - whose inspirational naturalist's handbook has become an English classic.

While the Lark Rise to Candleford trilogy, Flora Thompson's much-loved portrait of life in the English countryside, has inspired a hit television series, relatively little is known about the author herself. In this highly original book, bestselling biographer and nature writer Richard Mabey sympathetically retraces her life and her transformation from a post-office clerk who left school at fourteen to a sophisticated professional writer. Revealing how a formidable imagination can arise from the humblest of beginnings, Dreams of the Good Life paints a poignant, unforgettable portrait of a working-class woman writer's struggle for creative expression.

'One of our greatest nature writers' GuardianFor over fifty years, Richard Mabey has been a pioneering voice in modern nature writing. This book collects pieces across his rich career, tracing his continually evolving ideas as much as the profound changes in our environment. From the rediscovery of food foraging in the 1970s, to reflections on the musicality of birdsong, these essays show Mabey's passionate belief that our planet is a commonwealth for all species, and that our reconnection with the living world is more vital than ever.'Richard Mabey is among the best writers at work in Britain' Tim Dee'Poised where nature meets culture, [Mabey] is knowledgeable, politically savvy and wry, and an excellent naturalist' New Statesman

A timely new edition of Richard Mabey's profound and poetic book, Beechcombings , now updated with a foreword discussing the ash die-back crisis and its impact upon the most significant organisms on the trees.In 1987, the greatest English storm for three centuries laid flat fifteen million trees across southern England and devastated a nation of tree-lovers. The storm marked a turning point in our perception of trees and a dawning realisation that they have lives of their own, beyond the roles and images we press on them.In The Ash and the Beech Richard Mabey traces the long history of beech, ash and oak trees throughout Europe, writing about the narratives we tell about trees and the images we make of them. It is an engrossing, exciting, poetical and profound book that will stimulate debate about man's relationship with nature and enchant the reader.Originally published with title Beechcombings , this updated edition includes a new foreword by the author.

Home Country is Richard Mabey's memoir told on ridgeway and in beechwood, from the childhood dens built in the grounds of a derelict mansion and his dogged searches for lapwing nests, through his explorations in the fringes of outer London, to the rediscovery of his roots in the Chilterns when he became responsible for a 16-acre woodland of his own.

"The Frampton Flora" documents a beautiful collection of Victorian botanical paintings discovered in the attic of Frampton Court in Gloucestershire over a century after they were created. First published over twenty years ago, this revised, redesigned and updated edition of a classic bestseller includes new paintings that have come to light since the original discovery. Between 1828 and 1851 sisters Elizabeth, Charlotte, Catherine and Mary Anne Clifford and their aunts Charlotte Annne, Catherine Elizabeth and Rosamond accumulated a portfolio of over 300 exquisite watercolours of the wild flowers of Frampton and the surrounding area. The paintings are bold, exactly observed, and beautifully and skilfully executed. Although many of the flowers were sketched in the field, the watercolours were perfected at home and captioned in ink with the plant's Linnaean family as well as their common names. Richard Mabey describes not only the paintings and the family, but relates their work to the rich flora of the woodlands, grasslands, wetlands, gardens and fields of England in the mid-nineteenth century.

Plants with a A Guide to the Everyday Uses of Wild Plants

Derived from the author's "Flora Britannica", this book takes a broad definition of herbs and includes 100 wild plants of England, Scotland and Wales. As well as describing them, the author gives an account of the role of wild herbs in social life, arts, custom and landscape.

SQUARE Octavo, 1989, PP.181,

The first botanical gardens were set up to gather the world’s plants and recreate a Garden of Eden. Using the Eden Project as a springboard, Richard Mabey explores the myth of the Garden of Eden.

Illustrated

In this examination of the evolution of the traditional countryside the author concludes that some of the solutions for its future lie in lessons that could be learnt from the past. He argues for an imaginative rural landscape policy, recognising that the fate of wildlife is inextricably connected with our own and that nature conservation touches on the quality (and perhaps even the continuance) of all our lives.

Nightingales have acquired a newly high profile in the past couple of years, as a consequence of revelations about the collapse in their numbers and renewed interest on their cultural history. This book looks at the natural history as well as the literary history of the Nightingale

Despite being the most celebrated songbird in the western world, the real nightingale is a drab-coloured migrant. Mabey examines why humans have so often fallen under its spell; how it came to inspire the Romantic poets; and what this tells us about our own responses to place and season.

A profile of a single oak tree and the diverse types of wildlife that live in, on, and around it follows the tree from its beginnings as an acorn through two hundred years of its life