Combining Nightwalking and Nightlife, in After Dark award-winning nature writer John Lewis-Stempel takes us out into the night to discover a world normally hidden from view, its rarely seen spectacles and curiosities.
The north star has just switched on, and the lane up to the wood is lit by the moon… At night, the normal rules of nature do not apply. The senses become reordered and nocturnal creatures emerge to reclaim the countryside.
Few walk by night, into that other place. Everything is different. In place of bees, glow worms.
Instead of commuting cars, the sky-traffic of migrating fieldfares. Hares box under the light of the moon, night-jars hunt moths, and stars stud the sky like jewels. So, it is time to leave our lairs and join the creatures of the night.
‘Lewis-Stempel’s greatest gift remains his prose, with all its vividness and energy’ DAILY MAIL
‘An enticing paean to the night’ GEOGRAPHICAL
'Britain's finest living nature writer' THE TIMES
Our Bookseller says:
'John Lewis-Stempel is a writer of unique insight and poetry. A historian by education, a farmer by vocation and a lover of the world around him. His writing on any subject is worth reading, he's never more at home than when extolling the virtues of the natural world. This collection of essays about the darker hours is, ironically, and illuminating read about the snuffling and shuffling, shrieking and creaking things that go about their business after sunset. As someone who finds more comfort in the darker half of the year, this was like settling in with an old friend, cosy in the embrace of velvet night.'