Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land - as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers). Birds are comparatively easy to observe, and Whites many bird observations attracted one ornithologist to edit an edition of Selborne, with notes that. Here too are exquisite writings on trees, fossils, bats and rainfall, filled with intellectual curiosity and joy in the natural world. The letters of the eminent naturalist Gilbert White are full of precise, unaffected and delightful observations of the wildlife of his beloved village of Selborne, describing the habits, colours and songs of birds from lapwings to barn-owls, wrens to house-martins. Such an echo, White relates, was eventually discovered, quite by accident, by a young gentleman who became separated from his companions on a summer evening walk. Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a. The one element apparently missing from Selbornes rich acoustical environment was what White called 'a polysyllabical, articulate echo,' the echo of a human voice.

Here too are exquisite writings on trees, fossils, bats and rainfall, filled with intellectual curiosity and joy in the natural world. The letters of the eminent naturalist Gilbert White are full of precise, unaffected and delightful observations of the.

Birds of Selborne by Gilbert White