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An excellent review in the August issue of Flypast, the largest-circulation monthly newsstand magazine on aviation, praises The Flying Boat That Fell to Earth as an ‘evocative exploration of the golden age of air travel.’ ‘Beautifully written’, it concludes, ‘with poetic strains and a hint of melancholy in places, Coster’s book is a fine homage to the flying boat.’
Country Walking, the UK’s bestselling walking magazine, has just featured Yorkshire Coast Path in its July issue as one of ‘Two Coastal Corkers’, noting its ‘detailed route descriptions, OS mapping and in-depth features on points of interest along the way’.
Paul Wood, author of London’s Street Trees (now in its third printing) and now London Is A Forest (Quadrille), has an article on the capital’s trees in the latest issue of the London Magazine.
Paul Wood, author of London’s Street Trees and the just-published London Is a Forest (Quadrille) joined the London Borough of Hackney’s tree officer Rupert Bentley Walls to lead a walk around the streets of Clapton to appreciate the amazing diversity of species Rupert and his team have planted around this ‘urban arboretum’. Organised by councillor Vincent Stops, the walk attracted a turnout over over 40 people, all of whom were amazed to be shown by Rupert magnolias, dogwoods, laburnum/broom grafts (flowering different colours on alternate sides of the tree), numerous rare species of birch, and a Mongolian lime - amongst others. Here the party gathers at the walk’s end opposite the Elderfield pub beneath a Kentucky Coffee Tree.
On Saturday 13 April the Yorkshire Post devoted the front cover of its colour magazine and a feature inside to Andrew Vine’s new Yorkshire Coast Path walking guide. A second feature follows next week.
Every year Welcome to Yorkshire, the tourism organisation for Yorkshire, organises a huge conference for tourism providers, and this year, at Y19 at the Royal Armouries in Leeds, Yorkshire Coast Path’s author Andrew Vine was interviewed by BBC presenter Rob Walker about the book in front of no fewer than 1,000 delegates.
Such has been the influence of Paul Wood’s London Street Trees book that it has already inspired more than one community-led planting of new street trees, of species championed by the author in it. A line of Persian Silk trees now runs beside Brockley Station, while the author himself assisted with the planting of this new Kentucky Coffee tree in Deptford. The project was sponsored by the Deptford Folk, who also provided the picture.
A truly stellar cast assembled at the Tabernacle in Notting Hill for the How To: Academy’s event on Caroline Atkins’ What a Hazard a Letter Is. Two hundred people filled the converted church to hear Harriet Walter, Tom Hollander, Tuppence Middleton and Nina Toussaint reading out letters from the book, each introduced by Caroline. Highlights included Harriet Walter as Virginia Woolf and Oscar Wilde, Tuppence Middleton as Katherine Mansfield, and Tom Hollander reading Captain Scott’s last letter to his wife.
‘The unsent letter, as [Caroline] Atkins shows in her enjoyable range of examples,’ writes Frances Wilson on What a Hazard a Letter Is in her long review in the TLS of books about letters and letter-writing, ‘has a thrilling, virgin quality. It is by turns a non-event, a near-miss, a relief, a tragedy, a possibility, a loss, a gain, a potential, a deprivation and a spoilt story. The unsent letter also has an excess of immediacy and authenticity, which is usually why it is unsent.’
The new March edition of Sainsbury’s Magazine reviews What a Hazard a Letter Is and praises ‘this immaculately observed book’, and particularly noting the letters written by Virginia Woolf, and David O. Selznick to Alfred Hitchcock.