In the good books
There are a huge number of books on field sports, ranging from practical guides to memoirs – but what pushes our Editor’s literary buttons?
Agood friend of mine disdains most of my books about hunting, shooting and fishing. They are, he says, activities to be experienced first hand rather than vicariously. He’ll make allowances for books (or, more accurately, manuals) which are largely practical or informational, but anything that smacks of whimsy strikes him as unforgiveably self-indulgent and to be avoided at all costs.
I beg to differ. As you might imagine, editing this august organ means that I have a pretty extensive collection of books about hunting, shooting and fishing, with an obvious emphasis on all things Scottish. I’m in the happy position where publishers send me a multitude of books, allowing me to discard those which don’t demand more than an hour or two of my time, and keeping those with the ability to enchant and inform time after time.
In line with my friend’s instructions, many of the books I keep are information or instruction driven. Looking up at the relevant sections of my bookshelf the first handful of sporting books that catch my eye are The Sporting Shooters Handbook, The Poacher’s Handbook, The World Of The Lurcher and Hugh Falkus’s seminal Salmon Fishing: A Practical Guide, which has been with me for over thirty years.
These, though, are the books that I tend to read only when I need to access specific information. By contrast, the field sports books I read for no practical reason tend to be more whimsical and eclectic. And these are the ones which give me the greatest pleasure.
They range from novels like John Buchan’s John Macnab to memoirs like G Bedson’s The Notorious Poacher: Memoirs of an Old Poacher, Theodore Roosevelt’s gory but compulsive Good Hunting In Pursuit of Big Game in the West, Jim Corbett’s Man-Eaters of Kumaon and the life of that famously prolific deer stalker the Marchioness of
Breadalbane’s The High Tops of Black Mount.
Fishing features prominently, as do authors such as Sir Johnny Scott, BB and Charles Rangeley-Wilson, while I also love books which feature photos (especially those of bygone times) which give a sense of the wonder and camaraderie to be found on the river, beating line or on the hill. Anything by photographer Glyn Satterley, for instance, is guaranteed to cheer me up.
Books about field sports are like books about sport (another obsession of mine) in that not all field sports are equal. In sport, the most stellar literature and memoirs are about cricket and boxing, while by comparison football, golf and rugby are distant second best. It seems some pursuits just have better stories to tell, lend themselves more readily to tall tales, or perhaps boast enthusiasts of more thoughtfulness...
So it is with field sports: I can’t think of a book about game bird shooting that I’d like to read again, while deer stalking and big game hunting has a limited (and mostly pretty ancient) literary canon. But for some reason fishing continues to spawn the most evocative and glorious writing. This goes all the way back to Izaac Walton’s The Compleat Angler, but in recent years there has been a deluge of readable books on the subject, many of them rooted in Scotland. Malachy Tallack’s Illuminated by Water, David Profumo’s The Lightning Thread, Jeremy Paxman’s Fish, Fishing and the Meaning of Life, Charles Rangely-Wilson’s The Accidental Angler, Tom Fort’s Casting Shadows and Andrew Douglas-Home’s A River Runs Through Me have all been published in the past twenty years and all are well worth curling up on the sofa with.
I have certain websites bookmarked so that I know what field sports books are on the horizon. The publisher Quiller is one, while specialist bookseller Coch-y-Bonddu (anglebooks.com) is another. I’m also lucky enough that books find their way to me, often from unlikely sources. I’m currently reading The Age of Deer by American author Erika Howsare, a joyously readable rumination on the relationship between mankind and deer, which I’d heartily recommend. Like all of the most memorable books, it’s not only informative and enjoyable, but unexpected.
ùThe field sports books ¶ lo e tend to be more himsical and eclecticú