A Year with Gilbert White

Gilbert White was a country curate. He lived and died in a small village he had known all his life, surrounded by friends and family. He was also one of most significant, pioneering naturalists in the history of science. In 1789, he would publish The Natural History of Selborne, a book based on his close, enquiring observations of his own small patch of the world.Never since out of print, it would prepare the ground for Darwin's evolutionary theory. It would also become a treasured possession to thousands, across generations -- soldiers in the trenches in World War One kept it with them as a vision of the Britain they had left, an emblem of 'home'.A Year with Gilbert White spends 1781 in the company of this at once extraordinary and very ordinary man. With his great book at the midpoint of its gestation period, Jenny Uglow immerses us in Gilbert's forensic, wondrous journal entries. Here is an opportunity to travel in time. To feel the rural reality of the harvest, of hops season, of bitter frost and desiccating drought. Here is a chance to discover the true complexity of a bird's nest; to comprehend the sex lives of snails and mosses. Or to meet a frequently absconded tortoise named Timothy. To learn the town gossip. To sit quietly at the centre of an international network, bounding humanity's scientific knowledge forward. Here is an opportunity to see the world through eyes forever open to astonishment.