A drizzle of nature writers

A parliament of owls. A gaggle of geese. A convocation of eagles. But what is the generic term for the army that has recently advanced over the literary landscape? Perhaps a drizzle of nature writers? Here they come, heads down in the rain, turning out their pockets for the samples of fungi and moss they have collected on the outskirts of our cities.

Bookshops now have whole tables dedicated to contemporary British nature writing. The first wave of this literary phenomenon was far more cheerful: the late lamented Roger Deakin sitting in his pollarded hornbeam and imagining himself at sea; Richard Mabey, the godfather of it all, with his wonderful Flora Britannica; Robert Macfarlane striding across wild places with lyrical intensity; Helen Macdonald eulogising her hawk.

But in their wake have come foot followers of a more miserablist cast. The problem is the fashionable notion of ‘edgelands’; that rather than just hymn the more conventionally beautiful parts of Britain, such as the Lake District or other national parks, the good nature writer should be able to find subjects of interest in the most unlikely of spots — the marginal territory at the edges of our motorways and cities.

This is certainly admirable. Yet while it may be worthy to try to write about the ecosystem of the dying buddleia on the railway tracks, it doesn’t always make for exciting reading. It’s not enough just to ‘turn up’ at some site deserving of more interest. It needs writing of spectacular skill to pull it off — as indeed Mabey achieved when he first introduced the concept of edgelands way back when.

The cover that Penguin has given Tim Dee’s new anthology of nature writing is almost a parody of this.