A small corner of England

Press, 28 February 1981, Page 17

A small corner of England

Hampshire Days. By W. H. Hudson. Oxford University Press, 1980. 242 pp. Index. $6.95. From Gilbert Whites “Natural History of Seibourne.” first published in 1789, to Janet Marsh's exquisitely illustrated “Nature Diary” of the Itchen valley, published in 1978. Hampshire has provided a rich and varied countryside for watchers, lovers and recorders of natural flora and fauna. W. H. Hudson's "Hampshire Days” (first published in 1903 and now reprinted in an attractive paperback edition; is his personal record of .the delights he found in exploring a largely unspoiled Hampshire. It stands in direct descent from White. Indeed Hudson acknowledges his. and all naturalists’ debt to that original clergyman, though he is

not afraid to take issue with him tn recording his own impressions of the countryside round Seibourne. Readers may feel that there has been a plethora of this type of book on the market in recent years, but “Hampshire Days” was worth reprinting. William Henry Hudson's diary has an old world charm in observation, reflection and expression which cannot fail to please. It is written, moreover, in an easily readable style which never becomes drily scientific, but communicates the drama of the behaviour of a cuckoo in a robin’s nest, or the comedy of a stag beetle's frustrated courting. No great claims, either literary or botanical, can be made for this work but it is a pleasing account of one man's pleasure in the natural world of a small corner of England—Margaret Quigley.