Old place names recall old ways of belonging. They often reference characteristics of the land or its use, the people who lived there, or the non-human lives they were enmeshed with. A great many of these vivifying genii loci are birds, although their identities aren’t always obvious because language evolves over time. We need a guide.
Enter Michael Warren: teacher of English, amateur ornithologist and a man who lives in a Britain different to the one most of us inhabit: a medieval one, which by some magic has “survived in another dimension parallel to our own”. The gift he bestows in this gorgeous book is that, by the end, we live there too, newly able to read the growth rings of place, and to perceive an alternative land shimmering over the one we already know.
