Eileen M Hunt: Feminism vs Big Brother - Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder; Julia by Sandra Newman Ugaz’s case is all too familiar in Peru, where powerful groups regularly use the courts to silence journalists by fabricating criminal allegations against them.’ My 40-year odyssey turning a field into a wildflower meadow that’s a buzzing, humming, fluttering world This is a fascinating book, with a huge amount of information, and lots of references plus further reading. It’s properly put together and on the whole made for good reading. But it does tend to leap about a bit, and I think the editor could have done a better job to help Jacobs make it flow. Despite that, I gave it four stars on Goodreads, which means that the content far outweighs its faults. David Gelber: Chancellors & Chancers - Austria Behind the Mask: Politics of a Nation since 1945 by Paul Lendvai

The Orchid Outlaw | Fox Lane Books The Orchid Outlaw | Fox Lane Books

Obsessed by orchids since childhood, Ben spent years travelling to far-flung jungles to see them in the wild. Then a chance encounter set him off on a journey of discovery into the wonderful, but often forgotten, world of Britain’s fifty-one native species. These include the Bee which looks (and smells) so much like one that even bees are fooled, the Ghost which exists without sunlight, and Autumn Lady’s Tresses which gave Darwin the proof he needed for his theory of evolution. Saving Britain’s orchids is about more than beauty in the wild; it is about protecting and preserving the rich tapestry of our natural heritage’The flowers of the man orchid (Orchis anthropophora) resemble people with stumpy limbs and a hood. Credit: Linda Pitkin / naturepl.com By now you are probably working out that Ben Jacobs is covering a lot of ground in this book. Law, science, and simple botany, plus habitat niceties, policy of local government officers and other groundkeepers… and did I say simple botany? Orchids are anything but simple. They are the most amazing, most complicated flowering plants you can imagine, and it turns out they even have their own mycorrhizal fungi they like to cohabit with ( like trees).

The Orchid Outlaw | Ben Jacob | 9781399802260 | NetGalley The Orchid Outlaw | Ben Jacob | 9781399802260 | NetGalley

So, what can we do to preserve these areas and the rare flora and fauna which live there? Firstly, never underestimate the power of you. Despite politicians’ carefully scripted sound bites, for decades legislation and policy in this country has failed to adequately protect our nature. That is a story not exclusive to orchids and the Cotswolds: the native inhabitants of these islands are dwindling at an unsustainable rate. This should concern all of us, for biodiversity is part of the fabric which allows this planet, our economies, societies, and future generations, to function. Without policy-makers turning this into the priority it deserves to be, saving our island’s nature and our children’s future is down to us. The enchantingly beautiful native orchid is, tragically, one of Britain’s most endangered wildflowers, but it’s still possible to see them if you look in the right places, says Ben Jacob, author of The Orchid Outlaw.When summer segues into autumn, the last of Britain’s wild orchids, autumn lady’s-tresses, raises its little spires hung with pale, honey-scented bells and offers its nectar to incongruously large bumblebee pollinators. Charles Darwin studied the way bumblebees pollinated these flowers and how this orchid has a very clever mechanism for ensuring cross-pollination. By doing so, these native flowers proved his theory of coevolution: the flowers would not look or operate that way without the presence of bumblebees. Similarly, without their pollinators, orchids such as the early spider would not have evolved to look, feel and smell as they do. The spectacular lady orchid (Orchis purpurea), likened to ‘little women in burgundy skirts and bonnets’. Credit: Marianne Majerus

The Orchid Outlaw - Wainwright Prize The Orchid Outlaw - Wainwright Prize

In the shady depths of beech forests, the otherworldly bird’s-nest (named after its scruffy, nest-like rhizomes) lives underground without sunlight, only sending its spikes of bone-coloured flowers into the daylight. Our two species of butterfly orchid — the increasingly rare lesser butterfly and commoner greater butterfly — have flowers like winged serpents sculpted by Dalí out of lemon meringue. They are pollinated by night-flying moths attracted to their lily-like scent and the ethereal glow they produce by moon and starlight. In contrast, the lizard orchid has been said to smell of goat and can have yard-high banners smothered in twisted petals like lizards’ tails.Ben Jacob leads a secret life as a clandestine ecologist. His first book, The Orchid Outlaw, blends memoir, cultural history, and nature writing to recount his illegal efforts to save England's orchids from destruction. The endangered red helleborine (Cephalanthera rubra), one of Britain’s rarest plants. Credit: Getty An area arguably unmatched for British flora, it boasts early purple, chalk fragrant, common twayblade, common spotted, northern marsh and early marsh, lesser and greater butterfly, and the scarce dark-red helleborine. Feoch Meadows, Ayrshire

The Orchid Outlaw by Ben Jacob - Jemima Pett Book Review | The Orchid Outlaw by Ben Jacob - Jemima Pett

Britain’s orchids are in decline — some are seeing a gradual slide towards extinction and others a recent population collapse. This is a consequence of a shift made about two centuries ago from millennia-old forms of land management to industrialisation. Over this period, clear-felling of ancient woodland, ploughing grasslands, draining marshes, urbanisation and the proliferation of chemicals in the earth, water and air have occurred on an unprecedented scale. Many of these factors have been enabled by feeble environmental legislation. Unfortunately, not all the chalk grassland that once clothed the Cotswolds has been saved. Today’s short-sighted planning policy allows rare habitats to be destroyed to make way for housing and transport infrastructure. Obsessed by orchids since childhood, Ben spent his twenties travelling to far-flung jungles to see them in the wild. Returning to the UK, he was entranced to discover our fifty-one native species and their exotic stories: the Bee whose flower looks (and smells) so much like one that even bees are fooled, the Ghost which exists without direct sunlight, and the Autumn Lady’s-tresses that helped Darwin work out his theory of evolution.Ghost orchids (Epipogium aphyllum) have not been seen in the wild in Britain for 13 years. Credit: Alamy Reading and learning everything he could, Ben realised that Britain’s orchids are in desperate trouble. Some, such as Summer’s Lady Tresses, have gone extinct; others, such as the magnificently strange Ghost Orchid, have not been seen since 2009; all have experienced vertiginous declines. Changes in land use and climate are responsible, but so too are Britain’s outdated environmental and planning laws, which seem incapable of protecting rare species in the face of the drive to build new homes and infrastructure. In fact, no one had rescued them and no one was languishing in prison for their destruction. I took a closer look at the Act and discovered it excuses any “lawful operation or other activity” from razing tracts of rare habitat along with all that lives there. This is partly why, for decades, this Act has not really worked. This isn’t just about orchids – many populations of protected species and habitats have steadily declined since 1981. You might think this would indicate that changes in the law or how it is applied are long overdue. Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the idea took hold that Austria had been the first casualty of Hitler’s aggression when in 1938 it was incorporated into the Third Reich.’