Professor Dinah Birch and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss The Faber Book of Science edited by John Carey and The Golden Mole and other living treasures by Katherine Rundell.
Professor Dinah Birch and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss The Faber Book of Science edited by John Carey and The Golden Mole and other living treasures by Katherine Rundell.
The Faber Book of Science is a wonderful anthology that showcases some of the very best bits of popular science writing. Each extract is introduced by comments and explanations by Carey and they cover topics as diverse as medieval lice, stardust, protons, butterfly collecting and the colour of radium. Carey also provides a marvellous introductory piece on popular science writing. The Golden Mole is a celebration of 22 endangered species, from the eponymous mole to the pangolin and the Greenland shark. It is written in beautiful prose and full of strange and fascinating facts. It was short-listed for numerous prizes, including the Wainwright prize for Nature Writing and both Waterstones’ and Foyles’ Book of the Year.
Dinah Birch CBE is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool, and until recently Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Cultural Engagement. Her speciality is Victorian literature, especially the works of John Ruskin and Anthony Trollope, and she has a particular interest in prose style. She is a regular broadcaster and contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books and was a member of the Man Booker prize committee in 2012. She has recently published a book on Trollope in the Very Short Introduction Series.
https://www.trinity.ox.ac.uk/people/dinah-birch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Rundell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carey_(critic)
