Bestseller Nature’s engraver – Jennifer S Uglow

At the end of the 18th-century Britain fell in love with nature. Thomas Bewick’s History of British Birds marked the moment, the first ‘field-guide’ for ordinary people, illustrated by woodcuts of astonishing accuracy and beauty. But it was far more than that, for in the vivid vignettes scattered through the book Bewick drew the life of the country people of the North East – a world already vanishing under the threat of enclosures. In this superbly illustrated short life, Jenny Uglow tells the story of the …