SOAR TO THE HEIGHTS OF SPRING

Several years ago, the acclaimed BBC radio producer and lifelong birdwatcher Tim Dee developed a plan to record his personal reflections on a favourite season. These preoccupations have been shaped partly by his fascination with the miracle of spring migration, on which he has written in two previous books: The Running Sky and Four Fields.

This hugely ambitious project has led to exploration along the entire Afro-European migration flyway, from the South African Cape and central Sahara Desert to the polar tundra of northern Norway. He then sought intellectual stimulation in the springtime musings of some of the greats of western literature: Goethe, Homer, Lawrence, Heaney and