In Birdland, journalist and lifelong birder Jon Gower explores our intimate connection with the bird life around us. From the symphonic song of the wren to the clack of a puffin’s beak and from epic migrations to sunset murmurations, birds are commonplace miracles. No wonder they have inspired our artists, writers and songwriters. Whether rare or abundant, Jon Gower visits some of the best places in Britain to watch birds, searching for some species he has always wanted to see such as wryneck, dotterel and barred warbler.

But all is not well in Birdland. Gower charts the many changes to Britain’s bird life over the last 50 years, as the countryside has seemingly emptied and in many ways fallen silent. He considers the effects of the climate emergency, the decline in biodiversity and warming oceans on birdlife and looks at work being done to mitigate these developments. But above all it is a celebration of birds and their being, and a call to arms to defend them. As Great Bustards return to our plains and eagles to our mountains, Jon Gower’s book examines the future from a bird’s-eye view.

‘Fascinating, spellbinding, erudite and great fun.’ Roddy Doyle

‘Remarkable. Lively ? Gower writes beautifully [and] the book is profoundly popular.’ Times Literary Supplement

The Turning Tide is a hymn to a sea passage of world-historical importance. Combining social and cultural history, nature-writing, travelogue and politics, Welshman Jon Gower charts a sea which has carried both Vikings and saints; invasion forces, royals and rebels; writers, musicians and fishermen.

The divided but interconnected waters of the Irish Sea – from the narrow North Channel through St George’s Channel to where the Celtic sea opens out into the wide Atlantic – have a turbulent history to match the violence of its storms. Jon Gower is a sympathetic and interested pilot, taking the reader to the great shipyards of Belfast and through the mass exodus of the starving during the Irish Famine in coffin boats bound for America. He follows the migrations of working men and women looking for work in England and tells the tales of more casual travellers: sometimes seasick, often homesick too.

The Irish Sea is also a place with an abundant natural history. The rarest sea bird in Europe visits its coasts in summer while the rarest goose wings in during winter.

The Turning Tide navigates waters teeming with life, filled with seals and salt-tanged stories and surveyed by seabirds. Lyrically written and fizzing with curiosity, this is a remarkable and far-reaching book.