Sophie Gee

value from these coal miners over several generations by this point.

And what we see, so it's a kind of version of nature read in tooth and claw.

And Heinz just kind of drops it in there.

And he doesn't give it any fanfare or explanation for why this seemingly totally undistinguished child has been able to pay such intensely close attention to this robin pulling a worm out of the ground.

And, you know, part of what's so great about it is just the actual

virtuosity of someone describing a worm being pulled out of the ground with with such incredible detail and accuracy and then the other passage I'd like to read is a little bit later on in the book when Billy heads out it's still before school at this point it's when Billy's coming back from his paper run and it's early morning and I think we must be in very early summer late spring and

A cushion of mist lay over the fields.

Dew drenched the grass and the occasional sparkling of individual drops made Billy glance down as he passed.

One tuft was a silver fire.

That's Gerard Manley Hopkins right there.

He knelt down to trace the source of light.

The drop had almost forced the blade of grass to the earth and it lay in the curve of the blade like the tiny egg of a mythical bird.

billy moved his head from side to side to make it sparkle and when it caught the sun it exploded throwing out silver needles and crystal splinters he lowered his head and slowly very carefully touched it with the tip of his tongue the drop quivered like mercury but held he bent and touched it again it disintegrated and streamed down the channel of the blade to the earth

slowly the blade began to straighten, climbing steadily like the finger of a clock.

Another absolutely bravura piece of nature writing.

And I want to say just a couple of things about that before we move on.

One is that nature writing in that way, bird writing, accounts by naturalists in Britain, have existed since the 17th century as a kind of

well-known format.

And they're really connected with very well-educated, usually clerical men who have kind of sinecures and who spend their time observing the natural world and then writing about it.

That's where nature writing comes from in British history.