Aldo Leopold once wrote, ‘There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.’ John Lister-Kaye’s Song of the Rolling Earth – his first book for many years and undoubtedly his finest to date – is written by one who cannot live without wild things, but makes essential reading for those who can. After a promising start in the early Seventies – The White Island (an account of his last days with the dying Gavin Maxwell) and The Seeing Eye were well received – Lister-Kaye’s writing career tailed off.
Now we know why. Part Wordsworthian memoir comprised of spots of time, part lyric Whitmanesque homily (the title is from Whitman), Song is inspired by Lister-Kaye’s love of nature, but underwritten by his bold entrepreneurial venture in setting up the first field studies centre in Britain.
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