Books like Ladders to Heaven — picked by fans

I could almost immediately smell the gorgeous scent of citrus wafting from the pages of this beautiful book through the magic of Helena Atlee’s precisely detailed writing.

Who would have thought that the story of Italy’s varied and numerous citrus plantations would take me on a journey all across the country, from Sicily’s west coast to the fragrant lemon gardens of Lake Garda, and in time from when the Arabs introduced bitter oranges up to the workings of the citrus industry today.

I love this book because it simply tells the fragrant story of how fruit, in various manifestations, has come to be cultivated all around the country and to represent something of the soul and the spirit of the Italian people.

For me, this is the book that really started the current drive to conserve pollinators in our rapidly changing world. Other authors had written about bees in particular, and how pesticides and habitat destruction were affecting them, but Steve Buchmann and Gary Nabhan were the first to bring all of the evidence together for a wide range of pollinators, including hummingbirds and bats as well as insects. This was an enormously influential book that helped to shape public opinion, global policies, and actions around pollinator conservation. It also influenced the research direction, and subsequently professional careers, of many ecologists and naturalists, myself included.

Dave and I are old friends – we were PhD students together – and it’s been wonderful to see his career as a scientist and author develop over the last couple of decades. Probably no other single individual has had more of an influence on public opinion about pollinators, especially bumblebees. A Sting in the Tale is a fascinating and highly readable account of his research on these charismatic insects and his founding of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. Informative, passionate, and amusing in equal proportions, just like the man himself! 

This ground-breaking book was the first illustrated field guide to cover all of the more than 270 species of bees that occur in Great Britain and Ireland. It provides a detailed account of the natural history of these fascinating insects, plus photographs and taxonomic keys to help you to determine what they are. Be warned, however, as the author acknowledges, many bees are challenging to identify! Nonetheless, Falk and Lewington’s book is invaluable for anyone interested in the natural history of bees.

I bought this book for my daughter Ellen when she was 3 or 4 years old, and I think I was even more enchanted than she was! It's a wonderfully told and illustrated story about the animals that live in and around the giant saguaro cactuses in the deserts of the USA and Mexico. The pollinators are birds during the day and bats at night, and this book provides a child's-eye view of some of the science. Ellen is now 31...where does the time go?

Children are our future and the ways in which we influence them will have enormous consequences for the fate of our planet, including how we conserve bees, birds, bats, and other pollinators. Books such as this are so important – every child should have access to them, at home, at school, or in public libraries.

I like this book because, while drawing on a number of other sources on this theme, it introduces us, in relatively few words per chapter, to the importance of a range of tree species to people, in a great variety of ways. 

Selecting 80 species - from England’s ‘London Plane’ to the ‘Sugar Maple’ of Canada - the book takes us on a journey around the world, by geographical region, summarizing key botanical information about each one and giving us examples of its significance or uses, past and/or present, often surprising or little known.

Each chapter has been beautifully illustrated by Lucille Clerk.

This is a fabulous book, a highly authoritative account of the extraordinary story of one of the world’s best-known drinks.  

Beautifully illustrated with archival posters, photographs, and botanical art throughout, it describes the fascinating history of tonic water, taking us from the 17thC discovery by Europeans of quinine, the anti-malarial extract obtained from the bark of South American Cinchona trees to the present day, detailing the history of carbonated water and its pairing with gin along the way.  

Meticulously researched and based on original source material and the unrivalled botanical collections held by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, this book does a magnificent job of combining scientific facts with stunning visual imagery.

Yew is packed with fascinating information about these mysterious, exceptionally long-lived trees.

Fred Hageneder has spent years studying every aspect of the yew and his book presents that knowledge in a compact, highly readable form. The botany, ecological interactions, and extraordinary longevity of yew trees are examined, as well as their unique uses, past and present, including the historic supply of timber for longbows and, more recently alkaloids for modern medicine. The tree's symbolism, sacred status, and spiritual significance to people since the prehistoric past are also described.

Richly illustrated throughout and meticulously referenced, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the cultural and natural history of the yew tree.

My current can’t-put-this-down read, The Island of Missing Trees is set between present-day London and Cyprus in the 1970s during the break-out of the civil war on the island.

It’s a family drama told in third person but interspersed between chapters following the lives of Ada and her star-crossed parents, a Greek man and a Turkish woman, there are whole sections of this book told from the perspective of a fig tree.

I particularly enjoy all of these sections because I never thought I might find myself one day sympathising/empathising with a tree and yet somehow, Shafak is really able to make me feel for that lonely fig tree whose comments on the world and human nature are so profound and thought provoking, they’ve invaded even my dreams. 

Another picture book dealing with difficult themes. John Coy’s, If We Were Gone speaks to what would happen should humanity fall into environmental catastrophe. While this is a very real and frightening topic for many of us, it handles the subject with a gentle tone and so much care, the reader can’t help but feel comforted. John’s book reminds us that we need the environment much more than it needs us, and that one day or another, there will be greener days ahead.