THE SEABIRD'S CRY

LIFE BETWEEN THE TIDES

How do sandhoppers inherit an inbuilt compass from their parents? How do crabs understand the tides? How can the death of one winkle guarantee the lives of its companions? What does a prawn know? In this blend of fascinating, surprising ecology and luminous human history, Adam Nicolson gives an invitation to the shoreline. Anyone who chooses can look beyond their own reflection and find the marvellous there, waiting an inch beneath their nose.

THE MAKING OF POETRY

The year in the late 1790s that Coleridge, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy spent together in the Quantock Hills, is the most famous year in English poetry. Out of it came 'The Ancient Mariner' and 'Kubla Khan' as well as Wordsworth's 'Lyrical Ballads' and the greatness of 'Tintern Abbey'. The idea that these poems came from this place, and that only by experiencing the physical circumstances of the year, in all weathers and all seasons, can the genesis of the poetry start to be understood.

SISSINGHURST

Author Adam Nicolson, grandson of poet Vita Sackville-West, traces the history of his family home: Sissinghurst. He tells of the passionate efforts to restore his family's celebrated garden, an effort that included a reinstatement of a working farm to grow food for more than 200,000 annual visitors.