Andrew Lack

David Lambert Lack

'Lord in heaven, how he Sings!' A love of birds, especially of the robin, shared over many years by father, mother and son, have brought this beautiful, entertaining, welcome book into being. REDBREAST: THE ROBIN IN LIFE AND LITERATURE by Andrew Lack, is an updated, extended - transformed - version of the classic ROBIN REDBREAST, by eminent ornithologist David Lack, which came out in 1950 and has long been out of print. In addition to the early pastoral poetry, poems are included by Ted Hughes, W H Davies, Hal Summers, Laurence Whistler, John Betjeman, Andrew Young, Frances Hodgson Burnett, John Clare, Walter de la Mare - the list is endless. The robin has been present at Elizabethan murders, in eighteenth-century politics, and in the Victorian nursery. Here is an example of its territorial determination: 'Oddest of all is the robin, who (in 1939) nested behind the engine of an aeroplane in Denham. Six times the nest was destroyed by the human airman, and six times the feathered airwoman rebuilt it. Then the man gave in, and let her lay her six eggs in her seventh nest. The hatching of the eggs was odder still. Mrs Robin sat on her eggs till the plane went up, and while it soared in the sky the hot engine acted as foster mother. When it came down to earth, the patient robin took up her duties again. The young robins were hatched between flights, and each as it saw the light could boast that it had already out-soared the golden eagle' - (Eleanor Farjeon, from 'The New Book of Days') In his Foreword, Richard Mabey (who also wrote the Preface for our triple-award-winner, 'An Exaltation of Skylarks' by Stewart Beer) describes Andrew's book as 'a rich re-working' of his father's book. He notes, as we know, that 'the bird has always been there in a corner of our hearts'. Embellishing the text are black and white illustrations, and colour plates include paintings by J M W Turner and Beatrix Potter, with brilliant, funny cartoons deftly drawn by Euan Dunn, of the RSPB. Terence Lambert (as for 'An Exaltation of Skylarks') has painted a striking wrap-round jacket that, with a lovely robin frontispiece photograph by a 13-year old girl, leads us into an absorbing storyland.

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