Keith Somerville's 3 favorite reads in 2023

I loved this book because of the passion with which it is infused for the hated and feared wolf. Reading it, I could feel the burning desire of the author to set the record straight against the background of the mix of fact and fiction that surrounds the story of Britain’s now long-extinct wolves. To read of their extermination makes one sad.

For me the style of writing and use of words had an almost spiritual tone – as in this line – “Lost forever in a forest of forget”.

It was an emotional and very personal account of the author’s exploration of the Forest of Dean to see and understand the lives of wild boars. Once native to Britain, they have done their own rewilding after scores were released, often from farms where they were bred for meat.

I found that Chantal was able to convey the feeling of being in the forest and the wonder at seeing boar. I found the book informative and with a real feel of the pleasure the author gained from the boar and the forest. She has a way with words verging on the poetic – “I will miss the shapes of the sounder as they emerge into the night. No matter. I have basked in the sounds of them being themselves. It is enough to know they are here.”

I love badgers, whether British ones snuffling through the dark wood or foraging around farms and houses or their distant African and Asia cousins, the honey badgers. I know and have benefitted from David Macdonald’s immense knowledge of wildlife.

This book is the product of 50 years of David’s and 30 years of Chris’s study of badgers in an Oxfordshire wood. You can find anything you want to know about badgers in this book, and it is written in a way that wealth of detail is not intimidating. Take this scene-setting start – “Like grave robbers, four of us, clutching long sections of pole, a metallic briefcase, and a radio-tracking receiver, shuffle suspiciously through the moonlight of the crisp January night.”