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(Photo credit: Granta Books)

Over the course of a year and a half, Miriam Darlington travelled around Britain in search of wild otters: from her home in Devon to Scotland, Cumbria, Wales, Northumberland, Cornwall, Somerset and to her childhood home near the River Ouse.

Otter Country follows Darlington’s search through different landscapes, seasons, weather and light, as she tracks one of Britain’s most elusive animals.

During her journey she meets otter experts, representatives of the Environment Agency, conservationists, ecologists, walkers, zoo keepers, fishermen, scientists, hunters and poets.

Above all, she learns how to track and be around otters.

This is an engaging and mesmerising book which should establish Darlington as a prominent voice within the new generation of British nature writers.

Further details of Otter country: in search of the wild otter can be found on our catalogue.

(Photo credit: Bloomsbury)

There is a great myth of the Romantic poet being a solitary, introspective soul. Daisy Hay shatters this myth with her compelling, revelatory group biography Young Romantics.

The fiery spirit of the journalist and poet Leigh Hunt bound together a tightly-knit group that included the restless Shelley, his wife Mary and her step-sister Claire Clairmont, who became Byron’s lover and mother of his child.

Author Daisy Hay explores the history of the group, from its inception in 1813 to its ultimate disintegration in the years following 1822. It encompasses tales of love, betrayal, sacrifice and friendship, all of which were played out against a background of political turbulence and intense literary creativity. They loved and hated each other. They were friends but they were also husbands, wives, brothers and sisters.

The turmoil of strained relationships would go on to inspire the drama of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the heady idealism of Shelley’s poetry and Byron’s own self-loathing, self-loving public persona.  

The story of their tangled lives is as dramatic as anything they ever wrote.

You can find further details of Young Romantics on our catalogue.