The Golden Mole: and Other Living Treasure: 'A rare and magical book.' Bill Bryson

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Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth In November’s C&TH Book Club , Belinda Bamber talks to Katherine Rundell about her new book, The Golden Mole, a gilt-edged treasury of animals that invites readers to reopen their eyes to the endangered glories of the natural world. Katherine has also just won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non Fiction 2022 for her previous book, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, a biography of the poet. Katherine Rundell : Thank you! I’m delighted to think of it being exchanged at Christmas. The only firm criterion for the animals was that a species or sub-species be endangered – which, dismayingly, is true for almost every species on Earth. Beyond that, I wanted to choose a mixture of animals with which we are unfamiliar – like, as you say, narwhals (at least one of my friends – a very competent adult in his forties – believed them to be mythical until he read the book) and animals where I could try to offer a fresh take on something you see daily: the aim would be, once you’ve read about crows being able to operate vending machines, or the old English belief in women who could change into hares, you will see them with fresher and sharper eyes. Even more disturbingly, Rundell argues that extinction is “not just happening because of our inertia: it’s incentive-driven” – through a ghastly process known as “extinction speculation”. Those who trade in Norwegian shark fin, rare bear bladders, rhino horn and even frozen bluefin tuna would love these species to go extinct, because prices would go through the roof. BB: You write in The Golden Mole: ‘We wake in the morning and as we put on our trousers we should remember the seahorse and we should scream with awe and not stop screaming until we fall asleep…’ Half the book’s royalties are going to charity, which ones?

There is an obvious danger that a book like this could feel preachy, and leave the reader emotionally flattened by its mawkishness and relentless recitation of downbeat statistics. But Rundell is far too clever a writer to allow this to happen. Our desire to get close to the world’s wild creatures has often done them very little good,” writes Rundell. “Every species in this book is endangered or contains a subspecies that is endangered, because there is almost no creature in the world, now, for which that it not the case.” I haven’t yet read Super-Infinite. But, early in the new year, as I was scanning my piles of unread books for something diverting, I noticed that a publisher had sent me another work of Rundell’s. Rundell’s talents stretch beyond kindling young minds, however. The book that grabbed so much attention last year is entitled Super-Infinite, and is a biography of the English metaphysical poet John Donne, who, across the late 16th and early 17th centuries, also found time to be a lawyer, a naval adventurer who fought beside Raleigh, an MP, a rake, and the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral. In presenting us with a world “populated with such strangenesses and imperilled astonishments”, The Golden Mole also wants us to be angry and committed to conservation. Here, Rundell makes a number of powerful points. The age-old search for (almost certainly nonexistent) “natural aphrodisiacs” is “evidence of great human vulnerability, and enough stupidity to destroy entire ecosystems”. Several species would be far safer if we could just abandon our silly faith in the magical powers of tiger claws, rhino horns or the flesh of the coconut crab.Rundell’s sentences are small miracles that charm, like a soft hand on the reader’s cheek. “The first lemur I ever met was female, and she tried to bite me, which was fair, because I was trying to touch her, and because humans have done nothing to recommend themselves to lemurs.”“I once met a half-tame she-wolf… she smelled… of dust and blood. She did not want to meet my eye. Wolves are like the fairy tales they prowl through: wild, and not on any body’s side.” And on, beguilingly, she goes. KR: I do! I have several full notebooks, and a cascade of notes on my phone, many of which I’ll never use. Frank Cottrell Boyce, a writer I admire hugely, always says that writers should keep a diary: but that it should be by force limited to a single sentence a day: the most interesting, funniest, saddest thing you heard that day, so that at the end of the year you have 365 interesting sentences. I’m imperfect at keeping up with it, but I love the idea. Often my single sentence will be a note of something I read about the natural world.

My friend [the novelist] Eleanor Catton told me to read this; I am so grateful to her. The book, which contains 11 essays about politics, motherhood, vocation, writing, shines with a stark clarity; its boldness is in its simplicity. The title essay, The Little Virtues, argues that children should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones – “not caution but courage and a contempt for danger… not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.” I loved it more than any essays I’ve read for years. 2. FilmMyHome.ie (Opens in new window) • Top 1000 • The Gloss (Opens in new window) • Recruit Ireland (Opens in new window) • Irish Times Training (Opens in new window) Rundell’s selection is rangy and personalised. There’s bound to be animals one feels to have been unfairly overlooked, and I would have liked to see her on at least one bird of prey, or declining beetle, or endangered cat. The Bengal tiger would have been too much to ask: a whole book would be required to explore the references and resonances that accompany it. The lynx, though, is secretive and mysterious enough not to have already exhausted our cultural imaginations, and could fit snugly into one of these short entries. Some animals that would have most brilliantly galvanised Rundell in the telling and fit well into her format, rich as they are in folklore, misunderstanding and wild factoids, are doing just fine. The spotted hyena, much maligned and endlessly fascinating in terms of legend and science, by and large doesn’t need the help of a book like this. Rundell’s latest LRB piece has been published this month, and is on hummingbirds. As it’s not included here, maybe there’s a second edition of this golden treasury being planned. KR: In a dream world – I don’t think this will ever happen – I’ve never seen a hummingbird (there are none in Europe: people who think they’ve seen one have usually seen a hummingbird hawk moth) so I would love to go to Cuba to see the Bee Hummingbird – the smallest bird in the world, which weighs less than two grams. They have iridescent throats, and are just five and a half centimetres long – barely the length of a finger. You may change or cancel your subscription or trial at any time online. Simply log into Settings & Account and select "Cancel" on the right-hand side.

BB: ‘There is nothing like climbing a drainpipe at night to remind you just how dark dark can be’ is a line from Rooftoppers. Do you like to live dangerously? From bears to bats to hermit crabs, a witty, intoxicating paean to Earth's wondrous creatures [...] shot through with Rundell's characteristic wit and swagger."KR: There are many writers about the environment whose work I love, who write urgently and well about climate change, either directly or indirectly: Wendell Berry, Frantz Fanon, Naomi Klein, George Monbiot, Greta Thunberg, Marilynne Robinson. But I think the thing that is most galvanic is the natural world itself, and the increasingly terrifyingly visible truth of its peril.