Badgerlands: The Twilight World of Britain’s Most Enigmatic Animal - Hardcover

Patrick Barkham's wonderfully written Badgerlands helps to capture the meaning and appeal of Badgers and why the cull has sparked such resistance, broad, popular, respectable, non-violent and lawbreaking, by any means necessary. --Huffington Post

Carefully written... Barkham is a determinedly fair-minded writer, and he approaches the creature from all sorts of angles. Much of this is engaging. But what really entices is the badger itself, a cautious, secretive, curiously gentle creature about which so much is still unknown. --The Sunday Times

Patrick's account is passionate but also balanced... A compelling read. --The Simple Things

Enlightening and satisfying... Bagderlands is a pleasing read and provides plenty of food for thought - and this one does so in fine style. --Countryfile Magazine

Badgerlands offered a perceptive and compassionate insight into the world of this much maligned and misunderstood animal. --'Books of the Year' chosen by John Burnside, New Statesman

Badgerlands helps us through the moral maze of our complex relationship with badgers, in a highly personal book written with the style you would expect from the author of the wonderful The Butterfly Isles. --'Best Nature Books of the Year', Guardian

The badger is Britain's most beloved mammal, and the most loathed. Barkham listens to all voices in his excellent Badgerlands. --'Books of the Year', The Times

Beautiful --'Nature books of the year', Herald

Like the good journalist he is, Barkham talks to people on all sides of the debate to present a reasoned investigation. We accompany Barkham on his own journey to get to know badgers - their history and their habits. --'Nature books of the year', Daily Mail

'Badgerlands will give generations of interested parties much fascinating information to ponder just as tens of thousands of these tanks of the woods suffer untimely deaths. But the book's best passages describe Barkham's nocturnal forays into wild badgerdom' --Times Literary Supplement

Like the good journalist he is, Barkham talks to people on all sides of the debate to present a reasoned investigation. We accompany Barkham on his own journey to get to know badgers - their history and their habits. --'Nature books of the year', Daily Mail

'A carefully written exploration of the cultural and natural history of this much-loved animal. Barkham approaches the creature from all sorts of angles. Engaging' --Paperback review, Sunday Times

'This book increases everybody's understanding of the most difficult and controversy-ridden species of British fauna' --Paperback review, The Times

Britain is the home of the badger - there are more badgers per square kilometre in this country than in any other. And yet many of us have never seen one alive and in the wild. They are nocturnal creatures who vanish into their labyrinthine underground setts at the first hint of a human. Here, Patrick Barkham follows in the footsteps of his badger-loving grandmother, to meet the feeders, farmers and scientists who know their way around Badgerlands: the mysterious world in which these distinctively striped creatures snuffle, dig and live out their complex social lives. As the debate over the badger cull continues, Barkham weighs the evidence on both sides of the argument, and delves into the rich history of the badger - from their prehistoric arrival in Britain and their savage persecution over the centuries, to Kenneth Grahame's fictional creation in Wind in the Willows and the badger who became a White House pet. From the celebrated author of The Butterfly Isles, this is rich, vivid nature writing at its best.