Just wild about birds
David Edelsten
AUDUBON'S ELEPHANT by Duff Hart-Davis Weidenfeld, £18.99, pp. 192, ISBN 029782967X There cannot be many for whom the name Audubon means nothing, nor many who know more of him than that he was the author of The Birds of America, whose four colossal and nearly priceless folios, with illustrations 'so big, so bold and so blazingly coloured, so full of energy and violence', caused a sensation when they were first published
herself in some extremely perilous situations, worthy of James Bond himself, before she learns how to play Cell at his own game and stop the world. The dustjacket, covered with sparkly stars and a portrait of the charming Petula, gives the book a suitably festive appearance.
On a more realistic level, away from all the witches and wizards and hypnotic powers, Indigo's Star by Hilary McKay (Hodder, £10) is an amusing and heartwarming depiction of the bohemian family which she has already introduced to us in Saffr's Angel, winner of the Whitbread Award. Chaotic, improvident, affectionate and creative, the Casson children were all named after artist's colours by their painter mother, Eve: Cadmium, Indigo, Saffron and Rose. Eve specialises in 'angelic' glowing pictures of pets that looked human and intelligent (like children), and children who looked wistful and beguiling (like pets). 'Not exactly art, Eve, darling', as absentee husband Bill patronisingly points out. This is the story of a family where the parents have drifted apart to the point of no return, but it is essentially optimistic, with Indigo and his new friend Tom eventually triumphing over the school bullies.
Most of us would probably be embarrassed to admit how much of our knowledge of the past comes from historical novels. The House of Windjammer by V. A. Richardson (Bloomsbury, £12.99) is a novel for older children set in Amsterdam at the time of the 17th-century tulip boom. Fifteen-year-old Adam Windjammer becomes head of a great shipping dynasty on the death of his father and uncle, at a critical moment when his firm's Star Fleet has been lost in a storm off the New World. His struggle for the survival of the family business against a background of intrigue, danger and skulduggery is firmly set in its historical context.
There are two good non-fiction books from Kingfisher this year. Castles and Forts by Simon Adams has interesting descriptions of castles from many parts of the world and periods of history. It is hardback with colour illustrations and is excellent value at £7.99. Also well worth the money is Saints and Angels by Claire Llewellyn (£10.99). This beautiful book tells the legends of some of the best known saints and the biblical angels. The illustrations, which are all from Old Master paintings, are particularly well reproduced.
The new Oxford Treasury of Fairy Tales by Geraldine McCaughrean is a handsome volume with well written versions of all the old favourites and a good selection of less familiar stories.
Finally, if you are thinking of a paperback in the stocking. Jane Nissen Books have an excellent selection of old favourites. I was particularly pleased to note the long overdue reappearance of Violet Needham, with the reissue of The Woods of Windri (£7.99). nearly 200 years ago. 'Until then birds had been portrayed in static poses, usually in profile', Hart-Davis tells us. 'But here were birds twisting in flight, birds climbing, diving, screeching, birds fighting: owls, herons, falcons and eagles all the size of life.' If one can but only get to see them, they still cause a sensation today.
This biography of a man, scarcely less colourful and striking in character and life than one of his more spectacular creations, focuses on the heroic gestation of his 'elephant', the folios, and his struggle to get them published. This he could achieve only here in England: he crossed the Atlantic four times.
Born in 1785 in the Caribbean, the illegitimate child of an illiterate chambermaid, he was raised in France and sent, aged 18, to the family farm in Pennsylvania. Although throughout his life (he died in 1865) he was never in funds, was driven at various times to teach dancing and fencing and at least once saw the inside of a debtor's cell, he was from the start obsessed with the American wild and its birds.
Ardent, adventurous, immensely talent ed, frenetic, naive, wildly protean in mood, lovable, in due course lionised, much courted but utterly faithful to his rock of a wife, John James Audubon comes across in this delightful book much as he must have struck contemporaries. He was an original.
But almost more improbable was the ambience that he strode into when he first came to this country in 1829 in search of a publisher. 'It is much safer to put one's foot in a hornets' nest than to provoke a swarm of naturalists', one of his defenders wrote, when Audubon was savagely berated for claiming that rattlesnakes could climb trees (they can) and that vultures cannot smell (they can't).
The philippics he, an American of doubt ful birth, inspired from gentlemanly amateurs who took their claims to be naturalists extremely seriously were paradigms of spite. However, posterity has blown this froth away, leaving Audubon to stand alone alongside our own John Gould: two giants of pre-photographic ornithology, two rare men who had the eye and genius to 'catch the moment' in vivid images of their fleeting subjects, and the courage and chutzpah to emerge from obscurity to publish them.
As well as being a first-class read, this book is worth buying just for its illustrations. There are many good reproductions here of pictures very few of us can ever hope to see: a set of Birds of America sold last year for $8.8 million.
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