Overview

Steve Nicholls makes an epic journey along the River Tees in north-east England, from the industrial complexes near its estuary to its source high in the Pennine Hills. The Tees estuary was where Steve’s life-long passion for nature was born, launching a long career as a documentary maker. As he travels the length of the eighty-mile river, he uses his years of travelling the world and his work on nature films to place the fauna and flora he encounters along the Tees in a wider context. He weaves together strands of personal experience, nature writing, botany, geology and history with an account of the impact of human industry and agriculture on the Tees and its valley. Steel River is thus a natural and social history of a remarkable river, but also presents the Tees as a universal exemplar of environmental degradation, allowing the author to reflect on – and offer prescriptions for – the broken state of the natural world after 10,000 years of human activity.

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9781804542620

Table of Contents

Reviews

The north-east has long been a place of proud industry. Beneath the sweat and grime, however, the region’s biodiversity has taken a battering for generations. In Steel River, Nicholls deftly examines whether nature — and by extension, humanity — can ever truly heal and regenerate. * Sally Coulthard author of A Short History of the World According to Sheep * An admirable book... Nicholls has a powerful message for us: that environmental degradation and social inequality are twin facets of the rush to rob the planet of its resources. * Max Adams, author of The King in the North * Praise for Steve Nicholls: Steve Nicholls is an expert guide, leading us across meadows blooming with buttercups and orchids... He presents a visually stunning, readable and scientifically rigorous survey of Britain's wildflowers. * Countryside * One of the best reads I have undertaken in 2023, [Nicholls] oozes knowledge and enthusiasm. * Biologist Magazine *

Author Information

STEVE NICHOLLS is an award-winning television documentary producer and director based in Bristol. He holds a PhD in dragonflies from the University of Bristol and is a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society of London. He has spent thirty years making wildlife films, including ten with the BBC Natural History Unit, and his plant photographs have won several awards in the prestigious International Garden Photographer of the Year competition. Nicholls is the author of Paradise Found: Nature in America at the Time of Discovery, Flowers of the Field: A Secret History of Meadow, Moor and Woodland and Plantet Insect: How Insects Conquered the Earth.

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