A century ago, the well-known naturalist W H Hudson was a senior figure in the Royal Society for Protection of Birds with a significant reputation in his field. A Prolific writer, one of his 32 books, Birds in a Village has been popular down the ages.

The village he wrote about, typical of many pretty, rural settings across the nation, has of course changed over the intervening 100 years. In this new book, Hudson's original text is re-produced and Brian Clews reviews the species that have subsequently been lost, and the new ones gained, in the very village Hudson wrote about all those years ago. The anecdotal style used by both authors will remind readers of local changes in their own locations and hopefully encourage many more to become explorers of the countryside.