Ex Libris Kirkland

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First Written 2020
Genre Nonfiction
Origin UK
Publisher Grove Press
ISBN-10 0802128815
ISBN-13 978-0802128812
My Copy library copy
First Read October 02, 2020

Vesper Flights



I really enjoyed a bunch of these, and it's filled with a mix of cool facts that make you want to read things out loud to your neighbor, and also some beautiful, eye-opening moments of transcendence.

Noted on October 17, 2020

Collection of short non-fiction around observing the natural world. If you liked H is for Hawk!

Noted on October 17, 2020

Displayed on a small plinth in a university museum in the German city of Rostock is a famously gruesome exhibit: a stuffed white stork whose sinuous neck is pierced by an iron-tipped wooden spear from Central Africa. This unlucky bird survived the attack and flew back only to be shot by a hunter in Germany in the spring of 1822. Newspaper reports revealed the spear's distant origin, and the newly christened pfeilstorch, or arrow-stork, became celebrated for solving the puzzle of where German storks spent their winters.

Quoted on October 17, 2020

This, then, is the story of Maxwell Knight - the man called M - and a cuckoo called Goo. Knight was a tall, patrician British intelligence officer in charge of MIs departments dealing with counter-subversion on home ground. And yes, as 'M' he was the inspiration for James Bond's controller. From the 1930s to the end of the Second World War, Knight placed agents in organisations such as the British Union of Fascists and the Communist Party of Great Britain. He was an extraordinary character: secretly gay, a writer of appalling thrillers, a keen jazz trumpeter, a disciple of the dark magic of Aleister Crowley, and an inveterate keeper of animals: crows, parrots, foxes and finches all shared space with agents in Knight's safe house in the Home Counties. After the war ended, Knight began a second career as a BBC radio naturalist.

Quoted on October 17, 2020


Ex Libris Kirkland is a super-self-absorbed reading journal made by Matt Kirkland. Copyright © 2001 - .
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