One Midsummer's Day: Swifts and the Story of Life on Earth

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Lyrical and startling by turn, he reveals the extraordinary in the apparently ordinary... A jewel of a book Caroline Lucas MP An outright classic of his genre [...] If you thrill to the swifts' arrival (and mourn their annual too-soon departure), this book will enchant as they do [...] A nature classic for the new century"

The winner of the 2022 Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition, Shunta Morimoto, will dazzle us with a solo recital of Mozart, Brahms and Rameau. This is underpinned by a structure based on a notional day of watching Common Swifts from Mark's garden. This device is effective because Mark has put the time in with his screaming summer visitors and it shines through in his knowledge of their behaviour, augmented by extensive research including personal discussion with a number of authorities on these birds. What is even more amazing than what we learn about swifts is how little we know about them, still. Until 1943, when hunters in a Peruvian rainforest flushed out 13 ringed birds from a hollow tree, observers north and south of the equator had no idea where swifts went for half of the year, and we’re still not much the wiser. The birds’ scientific name, Apus apus, comes from a Greek root word meaning “footless” because of an ancient belief that they never landed; in the 17th century, British swift watchers thought they flew to the moon in winter. Now, thanks to a recent Swedish study, we know that in the non-breeding season, many birds spend 99% of their time flying, eating and sleeping on the wing, and some never land at all.

His grandest effort yet. Told as a series of reflections that fly through his mind in the course of a single day watching swifts from his garden in Norfolk, he ranges across topics as widely as a swift ranges across the sky... Magnificent Financial Times Sir Mark Prescott is literally a racing legend without peer. At the Festival, he will chat with John Lloyd about his love of animal sports, his biggest triumphs and disappointments, the secrets of his enduring success, his books and much much more. (To those of you know little or nothing about horse racing: If there’s one thing that Sir Mark does as well as training horses, it’s story-telling.) They also ascend to extraordinary heights. Over ordinary ground they have been sighted at 4,400m, and sometimes collide with aircraft; above the Himalayas, “common swifts routinely feed up to 5,730m”. Luke Harding, the Guardian’s front-line correspondent covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine, will share some of the experiences and impressions captured in his new book, Invasion: Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival, in addition to giving us an update on the conflict. As both the Moscow bureau chief of the newspaper and someone who has found himself directly in the cross-hairs of Putin, Luke is uniquely well positioned to analyse and report on the war.

Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops Swifts are among the most extraordinary of all birds. Their migrations span continents and their twelve-week stopover, when they pause to breed in European rooftops, is the very definition of summer. They may nest in our homes but much about their lives passes over our heads. No birds are more wreathed in mystery.

The bestselling author of Crow Country and writer of The Guardian's Counrtry Diary tells the story of all life on Earth through a single day spent in the company of swifts. A rich and elegant exploration that takes us to unexpected places. With the swift as our lift, we leave the garden on an extraordinary tour that takes in the moon, amongst many other wonderful destinations" It's not often I am moved to tears. I wish you could reprint the last chapter of One Midsummer's Day as a free-standing essay and give it out to every schoolchild in the country Kathleen Jamie, author of The Tree House Lyrical and startling by turn, he reveals the extraordinary in the apparently ordinary ... A jewel of a book -- Caroline Lucas MP Situates both swifts and humans in the universe in a way that I've not seen done for any species... A beautifully poised book Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast