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Richard Smyth

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Writer for hire. Reviews, essays, features.

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Category: Features

BBC Wildlife feature: Happy Planet?

There’s more to the lives of wild things than survival and death.

biology, conservation, ecology, stress, wildlife

TLS commentary: Plashy Fens – The Limitations Of Nature Writing

Gilbert White’s Natural History Of Selborne (1788) has been regarded since its publication as a landmark text in British nature-writing. Does it still cast a shadow? Do the nature writers of the past decade owe White a debt?

JA Baker, nature, Nature writing

The Author essay: Like A Good Christmas Cake

Is the creative process nothing but a lot of rot? Well, in a way, maybe it is.

influence, writers, writing

TLS commentary: Man-made Wilderness

Wildcat and pine marten roam the forests; hawthorn and rosebay willowherb choke the country pathways. Fox and falcon flourish, flocks of rooks darken the fields, and beaver build in the upland waterways.

essay, literature, longread, rewilding, TLS, wilderness, wildlife

The Guardian Country Diary: Nest raids by feral mink take their toll

The moorhen had tried again. My passing-by startled her out of her nest – a cup at the foot of a stand of fading yellow flag irises, not two metres from the lakeshore. Before I made an apologetic retreat, I took note of a single soft-spotted pale egg resting in the hollow. All being well, another five or six would follow.

ecology, invasive species, mink, wildlife, yorkshire

New Humanist feature: Captive Audience

Sympathetic ear or religious recruiter – what’s a prison chaplain for?

humanism, prisons, religion

Illustration feature: Gargantua and Pantagruel

It’s hard to imagine anyone less obviously in tune with the spirit of the scandalous Renaissance priest François Rabelais than William Heath Robinson.

art, illustration, literature, rabelais

PUSH Hockey feature: A Brief History Of Goalies

A goalie’s decisions are based on a welter of variables: what’s the surface like, who’s the attacker, where are my defenders and – not least – is this going to hurt?

hockey, sports

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