Book Review: Birds, Beasts and Bedlam by Derek Gow*

Book Review: Birds, Beasts and Bedlam by Derek Gow

[Ad-gifted] If you are someone who has spent any length of time in the UK countryside – let’s say, since the 80s – you may well remember it being somewhat different to how it is now. Skylarks, curlews and lapwings, for instance, were a regular sight up on the moors when I was a child. There were also tiny brown minnows in the brook, leverets hiding in the moor grass where they had been left for their safety, and all kinds of voles and shrews running about. When I went exploring with my siblings, we found harebells, wild pansies, raspberries… and abundance of fauna and flora.

In Birds, Beasts and Bedlam, Derek Gow starts his passion for the beasts he writes of as a kid of about 12 years old, working a part-time job in the local market. He soon branches out into farming sheep, and later cattle, with mixed success as he gains valuable knowledge and sometimes painful experience of working with his herds. In the early days, he recounts that he was aware of the wildlife around him, but not really engaged with it. Like a lot of kids back then, his early dream was to become a zoo keeper.

As the story unfolds, Derek finds himself inexorably drawn towards conservation – first up are rare breeds of domesticated animals kept in a Scottish country park; a friend offers him a seasonal job there and he soon becomes the custodian of the captive wild animal section.

Derek’s keen interest in native British wild animals and their interaction with local nature finds him attending summer school at Gerald Durrel’s Jersey-based zoo. Here he gets the chance to meet with a plethora of like-minded animal enthusiasts. Back at the park, he lives in a wooden house in a forest and gets to look after a host of characterful, obstinate, gentle and intriguing animals – not to mention a colourful variety of human beings – as we navigate his life’s work through the pages.

What I thought of Birds, Beasts and Bedlam

Derek writes with energy – his anecdotes are tough, honest, humorous and passionate. He is as good at writing pen-portraits of the people and animals he meets as he is at illustrating the book with his brilliant illustrations. (He mentions at one point that he was never going to make a living from art, but he is a talented artist.) While Derek entertains you with his colourful anecdotes, he also provides the historical backdrop for context – a thoughtful presentation of facts that I really appreciated.

You get a rounded sense of animal life, too. We aren’t talking about a host of cuddly, fluffy, storybook creatures: they fight – each other and you – and they predate, hunt and plunder what and where they can: and when bred and released in the wild, they coexist, supporting each other and the habitats around them by trampling the land, stripping bark off trees and providing meals for each other.

Derek talks about the large organisations that act all too slowly, impede projects and waste money through initiatives and studies. I feel that he is very much a man of action and has little time for the politics and meandering of the quangos (dare I call them that?) who are in charge of looking after nature in the British Isles. Perhaps he is the kind of person who should be at the table when policies are drawn up for land use and protection.

Anyway, this is a fine book, and reading it left me with a host of questions. Can we change farming practice so that it works in harmony with nature? Can ancient meadows make a comeback? Should we let wolves manage the burgeoning deer population? And for me personally, will I ever hear the peewits, skylarks and curlews above my head on a summer’s evening like I used to? If rewilding Britain can bring back some of the biodiversity, even to the level of thirty or forty years ago, then sign me up to it. Derek Gow’s book is hot on topic for our current countryside debate.

Where you can get your copy of Birds, Beasts and Bedlam, and how much it costs?

Birds, Beasts and Bedlam is published by Chelsea Green, London, and available from Amazon for £12.99. and a host of good book retailers online.

You can find out more about Derek’s work here.

About the Author

Derek Gow is a farmer, nature conservationist and the author of Bringing Back the Beaver and Birds, Beasts and Bedlam. Born in Dundee, he left school when he was 17 and worked in agriculture for five years. Inspired by the writing of Gerald Durrell, he jumped at the chance to manage a European wildlife park in central Scotland in the late 1990s before moving on to develop two nature centres in England. He now lives with his children, Maysie and Kyle, on a 300-acre farm on the Devon/Cornwall border, which he is in the process of rewilding. Derek has played a significant role in the reintroduction of the Eurasian beaver, the water vole and the white stork in England. He is currently working on a reintroduction project for the wildcat.

About the Book

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Chelsea Green Publishing 
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1915294616
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.7 x 3.2 x 19.7 cm

Review by: Metia Bethell Egan

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* Disclaimer: We were given a copy of the book in return for a feature. All opinions are our own.