The Hunt for the Golden Mole: All Creatures Great & Small and Why They Matter - Hardcover

RICHARD GIRLING is an award-winning environmental feature writer for the Sunday Times Magazine. In 2002 he was named Specialist Writer of the Year in the UK Press Awards, and was shortlisted for the same award in 2005 and 2006. He was Environmental Journalist of the Year in 2008 and 2009. He has written several books, including Rubbish! (compulsively readable and often hilarious, as well as important John Carey, Sunday Times); Sea Change (a story of arrogance, ignorance and greed, and in Girling's electrifying prose it becomes a parable of wilful matricide Richard Mabey); and Greed (there's stuff to make your jaw drop Daily Mail).

"That rarest of delights: a roaring book of huge importance written by a master storyteller exploring our fragile relationship with the animal kingdom, offering insights into how a hopeful future could yet be snatched from the jaws of despair. Not a hint of preaching, not a whiff of worthiness. A great story written not by an idealist but by a pragmatist with a heart of gold with a clear eyed view of the world." Tim Smit "The Hunt for the Golden Mole is a wonderful book. At one level it is a detective story in which Richard Girling is on the hunt for a very rare creature. But it is much more than that: an understated but passionate advocacy for the biodiversity of the planet which combines lightly worn scholarship with a compelling argument. Overall it is a tour de force" Jonathan Dimbleby "An informed and informative, provocative and rousing work" -- Caspar Henderson Sunday Telegraph "This is a book that bursts into life from the first page... Rousing, fascinating... Utterly engaging" -- Camilla Cavendish Sunday Times "This book is a sobering, riveting read: part quest, part travelogue, part scientific debate and part much-needed environmental call-to-arms" -- Sarah Barrell National Geographic Traveller "I loved this book. This is natural history at its funniest, most curious, enlightening and heartfelt. I couldn't put it down. It was like going on safari with Gerald Durrell, Rachel Carson and Redmond O' Hanlon ... I was alternately wide-eyed with wonder, appalled and then tickled to laughter. It's beautifully written. And it's powerful. An elegy to every living thing on this remarkable planet. Impossible to finish without being uplifted by the wonder of the natural world and driven to do something about its plight." Nicholas Crane, writer and co-presenter of Coast "A gloriously readable, boundlessly fascinating shaggy dog story about the author's quest for one of hte world's more recently extinct species...what makes this book so wonderful: using his eye for detail, turning the ordinary into the extraordinary, teaching you to care about the little things." -- James Delingpole Mail on Sunday "delightfully written and a splendid romp through one man's mole-hunting search among the wilds of animal taxonomy" Daily Express "At the heart of this delightfully meandering book is a history of how we find and catalogue species, and a thought-provoking examination of our changing attitudes to wildlife" BBC Focus "Fascinating" New Internationalist "Elegiac and personal... Highly recommended" -- Henry Nicholls BBC Wildlife "A stirring tribute to the marvel of all living creatures" Sunday Times Summer Reading