Natalie Lawrence is an author and illustrator who explores our relationship with the natural world, looking through multiple lenses – from the biological to the psychoanalytic. She has a first-class MA Cantab in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, during which she spent most of her time in the Zoology Department. She received a MSc and PhD in History and Philosophy of Science, also from the University of Cambridge, working on the cultural creation of monsters and how they allow us to relate to the world. Natalie published her first book when she was a teenager, Feathers and Eggshells, inspired by her favourite place, Hampstead Heath and the birds she had been entranced by since she was young. She has given a TedX talk, appeared on BBC Woman’s hour, and worked with installation artists. She currently lives in London, teaches biology, and writes in a room filled with plants and specimens from her natural history collection, from Megalodon teeth to hornbill skulls. Occasionally she is joined by live giant silkmoths.

The late Professor Sir Colin Spedding (1925-2012) dedicated his long career to the study of biology, including animal welfare. He had a passionate interest in how living things interrelate and how such ecologies are shaped by the organism’s form, function, reproduction and behaviour. He was also very dedicated to the education of young people, showing them the organisation and complexity of living things, including their beauty.

The award-winning Author, Mike Barfield, has a 1st Class Honours degree in Biology from King’s College, London, and decided to embark on a career in writing, comedy, poetry and performance…and producing cartoons too. He won the Blue Peter Book Prize for Best Book with Facts in 2021.

Professor Hugh David Loxdale, MBE, was born in Horley, Surrey, England, but grew up in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, where, outside school, he spent much of his spare time roaming the countryside and observing wildlife. Besides an interest in science, especially biology, he was also interested in history and English literature. He started writing poetry in his late teens, although eventually decided to embark on a career in entomology rather than literature. To date, he has written ten books of poetry, including one for children…. Zoooo.

David A. S. Smith, PhD, FLS, FRES, a world expert on the biology of butterflies and the author of numerous scientific papers about them, was one-time Head of Biology and Curator of the Natural History Museum at Eton College, Berkshire, U.K. Before, during and since that time, he also spent extended periods in Africa, especially at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, where he studied the extraordinary biology of the African Queen butterfly complex, an iconic group of morphologically-similar, but genetically divergent species and sub-specific forms. The present work represents the accumulation of the fruits of his researches, painstakingly gathered over four decades.

Alexander von Mende is a professional marine biologist and expert scuba diver, who has worked in Germany, Greece, the Arctic, Peru and the Maldives. This is his first book.

John Thurlbourn has been passionate about animals and natural history since a very young age. He first took an interest in photography about 30 years ago. After working as a postman and later as a manager in a hardware shop, he worked at the Royal Veterinary College, North Mymms, Hertfordshire, caring for the animals there, a task which he found especially enjoyable. Moving into one of the cottages of the College sparked his wish to make the back garden ‘wildlife friendly’ and to record all the animals visiting it, using both still and video photography. This book, the fruits of his endeavours over a five-year period, is his first.

Former palaeontologist, lifelong naturalist and mountaineer, Michael David Jones has occupied half a century with exploration of remote parts of the world in search of rare plants and elusive wildlife. Trans-Saharan journeys to the Atakor Mountains, camel-treks with Laikipia-Masai warriors into the Ndoto Mountains of the Kenyan Northern Territories, and exploration of the Garhwal Himalaya of Uttarakhand are some of the more exotic adventures; winter ascents of High Atlas summits in search of Aoudad (Barbary Sheep) and the scouring of arctic tundra for Snowy Owl, the more extreme. Nearer to home, arctic-alpine plants and Mediterranean orchids have been a passionate interest, leading to numerous visits to the mountains of Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey.

Professor Michael J. Crawley, PhD, FRS, is Emeritus Professor of Plant Ecology at Imperial College London, based at Silwood Park, Ascot in Berkshire. He is the Botanical Society recorder for Berkshire and South Oxfordshire and has written a great many important scientific papers, book chapters and books on botanical themes. He is especially known for his love of the three Rs: rabbits, ragwort and the programming language R (a considerable contribution to practical statistical analyses of large data sets in the biological sciences). Currently Mick Crawley is Silwood’s longest serving staff member. The Flora of Berkshire is surely a tour de force of his knowledge of the plants of his adopted county, for which  he won the President’s Award jointly from the Botanical Society of the British Isles and the Wildflower Society in 2007. His somewhat controversial use of the famous White Horse of Uffington as depicted on the front cover of the book is because, as he rightly claims, the prehistoric hill figure may nowadays be technically resident in the ceremonial county of Oxfordshire, but it still also remains within the historic county of Berkshire. The late Queen graciously accepted a copy of the book as presented to her by the publishers.

Edward Pratt first took an interest in wild flowers as a child. His interest in botany has continued when he was a vicar and even then he found time to look after a small Wildlife Trust reserve. In 1997, he retired to Swanage and became a botanical volunteer for the National Trust, Durlston Country Park and the RSPB, and still leads wildflower walks for several organisations.