This is a good tale about the ups and downs of being a novice, but effective, environmental campaigner. It’s almost a ‘how to’ guide and it is based on the author’s experience of campaigning to get bird bricks (used by Swifts and other species) mandated as parts of new buildings.
It is a case study in how a simple, effective and cheap good thing is not adopted by government partly because of lobbying by remarkably short-sighted and mean vested interests and partly because many politicians fail to lead.
Hannah found a handsome Prince to help fight her cause in Zac Goldsmith but this was no fairy tale and Michael Gove played one of the parts which could be described as the villainous role.
Hannah is mostly famous for her love of Swifts but will also be known as that young woman who walked through London almost naked to publicise her cause. I’ve heard this described, mostly by women, as an act of shameless self-publicity but it took a great deal of nerve, even for a former model, and she was trolled by men and women alike on social, or should that be anti-social?, media.
Piers Morgan was helpful as were an interesting range of politicians from Caroline Lucas and Kate Hoey to Lord Blencathra and Barrie Gardner.
This is a well-written account of what happened, and what didn’t, and how the author felt as events unfolded. I recognise many of the feelings she felt as a fellow campaigner and have experienced many of those feelings myself. What I’ve never done is walk the streets almost naked and that’s partly because I doubt it would be very effective in my case but also that I really wouldn’t have the nerve, or the balls, to do it.
The cover? The Swifts are slightly too Swallowish but that’s a quibble. It’s perfectly OK and I’d give the cover 7/10.
Nature Needs You: the fight to save our swifts by Hannah Bourne-Taylor is published by Elliot and Thompson.
Buy this book direct from Blackwell’s – a proper bookshop (and I’ll get a little bit of money from them).
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