Way Back When

Two books. One is the Shell Country Book, a present on my eighth birthday - I was entranced by the colour plates, illustrating creatures I had never seen. The writing looks a bit advanced for an eight year old. The other is The Observer’s Book of Wild Flowers, precious to J because her dad bought it for her when she was perhaps nine or ten.

Since the early 1960’s the countryside has changed hugely as hedgerows have been ripped up to enlarge fields and the land has been sprayed with pesticides and fertilisers and intensively farmed. Not a hospitable place for wildlife. And book publishing has changed hugely too. Both these books were printed in Great Britain, the Shell book only five miles from my childhood home, in Letchworth. Whereas the three books I bought last week were all printed in China. Our consumer society now relies on the far east to manufacture many of the goods that we use and which were formerly made here, which I am not so sure is a good thing.