Sections on the sociological aspects of walking as well as entertaining anecdotes peppered throughout the more theory-rich chapters also provide interest for those readers with a less scientific mind. The passion Stephen Neale has for the English coast comes across loud and clear in this beautifully presented guidebook. The author worked with Natural England to assess the Essex section of the England Coast Path – what will be the longest managed and waymarked coastal path in the world once completed – but he clearly has an in-depth knowledge of the coast in its entirety. The book’s cover promises “1,000 mini adventures” and it’s safe to say it delivers. A safari here is the closest Britain has to a wilderness. So, perhaps unsurprisingly, the area also supports a thriving ecosystem of professional wildlife photographers, including local lad Andy Howard.

The Secret Life of the Cairngorms is Andy’s second book, following one on mountain hares (also stunning). That volume took seven years to complete. This is another triumph of spectacular images, mostly birds and mammals, taken in all weathers. You sense that Andy doesn’t do things by halves, lugging heavy camera gear up Munros and sleeping under the stars to watch the mountains and valleys reveal themselves at dawn. I poured over the beautifully illustrated plan of what a complete and perfect walled garden might look like in part one of the book, but otherwise, horticultural information is scant. There are few named plants, either edible or ornamental, which felt like a missed opportunity.The book offers an antidote to modern life’s digital distractions and endless rolling news cycle, which so often leave us running on empty. His awareness of the environment and eye for wildlife resonated as I read, and Will writes with a genuine sense of humility. He is well scarred from a life of travelling and exploration, but his experiences have made him wise. He avoids drifting too deep into memoir, and relates with humour and reflection. Cottongrass Summer won’t collect the headlines that a book by a celebrity natural history TV presenter might achieve, but I can’t think of a more important book that’s been written about British wildlife in the past 20 years. Tree-related superstitions, such as ‘touch wood’ are fascinating; many still utter these words when hoping for a good outcome. I enjoyed the stories of well-known individual trees, such as the Birnam Oak, and the woodland mentioned in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

The author reveals just how much we owe to fungi. Highlights from a dizzyingly long list include making existence on land possible; influencing the weather; sustaining plants and defending them against disease; servicing just about every inch of our bodies; cleaning up oil spills; creating whole new ecosystems; and giving us alcohol and penicillin (and more drugs besides). When Covid shook the world, presenter and author Mike Dilger ( One Show and Gadget Show) was forced to take a slower pace of life. We’ve reviewed more than 30 of the best new nature books to put together this selection, including titles on wildlife, gardening, history, landscapes, walking, and cookbooks filled with delicious seasonal recipes. Hugo Rittson Thomas’s captivating book is a visual celebration of these meadows, and is very much a book of wildflowers for everyone. Pairing enigmatic photographic landscapes of 20 selected Coronation Meadows across the UK with zoomed-in flat lays and herbaria-like arrangements of key wildflower species – tufted vetch, field scabious, great burnet and a surprising number of exotic-looking orchids – it is a suitably rich and colourful homage to the vital diversity and beauty of the UK’s native grasslands.Part one tells the stories of the England Coast Path heroes – those who have worked tirelessly to realise what, at times, must have felt like an impossible ambition. He goes on to outline his ‘best of’ coastal experiences: everything from swimming, snorkelling, camping and canoeing to foraging and fossil hunting. Part two divides the coast into 23 sections, with enticing suggestions for exploration: hug an oak, follow fulmars on thermals, catch crabs, visit a stone circle or watch seals. Much of the action takes place in the dark or half-light: we’re led at whisker-level over moors and streams into fields and woods as both hunters and hunted travel the landscape. The animal characters joke, grieve, love, form alliances and even have visions. Yet no other book has given me such a powerfully visceral sense of what it might be like to be a wild animal. In this luminous book, poetry and dreamy prose weave a strange kind of mossy magic. Taking the “most overlooked of life forms” as her inspiration, Burnett explores intriguing parallels between the lives of mosses and her own. She meets an abundance of them in wetlands around the UK, visiting raised bogs and reedbeds, damp caves, rewilded fens and Welsh rainforests, and also finds them close to hand, flourishing in the garden path of her childhood home near Dartmoor.

Beachcombing turns out to be a balm for body and mind, a restorative ritual that takes Huband around the Shetland archipelago and to Orkney, Fair Isle, the Faroes and Netherlands. She meets fellow beach-scourers, surveys the rich marine wildlife and falls in love with ‘sea post’, the ancient custom of casting messages adrift in bottles.

Unmoored by motherhood, Huband is struggling to find her place in the remote island community, and her painful joints are made worse by the relentless wind. But she discovers a new identity as a beachcomber. “Instead of fearing storms, I began to watch for them,” she says. Celebrating the 11th British Wildlife Photography Awards, this stunning collection showcases 150 of the winning and shortlisted images from the 2023 competition. Featuring a fresh new design, and supported by a touring exhibition, the book is both an essential reference tool and an irresistible gift, bringing every reader closer to the often unseen and always surprising world of British nature. We all have our preconceptions about Yorkshire, its landscape, people and history. Our thoughts will be a mix of straight-talking characters, dales, moors and rivers, heavy industry, classic seaside resorts, Emmerdale villages and gritstone towns. May shows the value of learning with our hands as well as our heads (by trying traditional crafts, for example). And she marvels at how our ancestors saw the divine in everything and walked through landscapes of memory and myth, with “grand stories” unfolding around them as they went about their daily business.

Traditional hay meadows are the rarest and most beguiling of all our farming landscapes. Strolling through one in high summer often results in sensory overload, such is the complexity of life sustained by the sward.

Best cookbooks

Every photograph has been beautifully reproduced in this large format, with detailed technical information appearing alongside the photographer’s personal note on composition and subject.