A visitation from a minor god
The past is a place which enriches me in almost all I do, and I love travelling there as much...
Mule meets Hamlet
Grossman has a wonderful capacity to imagine the minds and feelings of animals, and while chronicling the horrors of man's...
The thoughts of a pig
A wonderfully involved tail of a pig's escape and eventual recapture.
Firstly, a protracted endeavour to find him, eventually discovered...
An insolence of goats
Reading Gavin Maxwell's lively description of a kitchen takeover by goats makes me wonder how we can call them collectively...
My kinda cats – II
Generally speaking, I'm not a big cat fan, preferring dogs all round. However, although I can be dismissive of the...
The mule and the mare
Listening time: under 3 minutes
Grossman writes with great empathy of animals and their experiences. Here an...
Reptile-haunted rocks
This reminds me of the French word for basking in the sun, based on the word for a lizard: se...
Big blackberries
A berry crushed into service as a metaphor for a mud-mark.
'Tarka's deep seals in the lower ooze showed like...
Shovel-shaped antlers
Recently saw a David Attenborough programme showing such flat-planed antlers. Here they are spotted in the forest regions of Transylvania.
...
A cry like …
Williamson pays close attention to the calls and cries of birds and animals, and here he distinguishes between the mutual...
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