Some of the best writing around is about nature, but this year has been even more exceptional than usual — from a fell farmer’s lament for the loss of the old ways, to a paean to the world’s largest owl.
This is an epic tale of hangovers, violence and obsessive ornithology. Owls of the Eastern Ice is the story of Jonathan C Slaght’s quest to find the extraordinary Blakiston’s fish owl before its remote habitat in the frozen east of Russia is destroyed. It is a superb depiction of a far-flung corner of the world where bears, tigers and men battle with a relentless environment and each other. It is a powerful antidote to saccharine nature writing; Slaght encounters such a host of pickled gritty
