"The greatest lie that humans ever told is that the Earth is ours, and at our disposal," writes Katherine Rundell in her magnificent and magical book The Golden Mole, which tells the story of 21 of Earth's most fascinating creatures. "It's a lie with the power to destroy us all. We must cease from telling the lie."
Rundell describes The Golden Mole as "a wooing", calling on its readers to be dazzled by the glorious and fragile biodiversity of our shared home, and to stand up against those who would continue its reckless pillaging.
It's an astonishing and captivating book. Each of the first 21 chapters describes a single creature, from the spider to the Greenland shark, with a combination of biology, history, geography, cultural significance, and its current state of endangerment. There's so much to enjoy here, brought to life by Rundell's exquisite writing. Not long after starting the book, I began to note the passages I might quote in a review. I soon stopped for fear of copyright issues. You'll have to buy your own copy, and I strongly recommend you do.
The wombat, a podgy looking marsupial can run at 40 km/h and sustain that speed for 90 seconds! Coconut hermit crabs may have eaten the remains of Amelia Earhart, using their claw grip that can generate 3300 Newtons of force. (The human jaw by contrast generates somewhere between 500 and 700.) The Easter bunny started life as a hare. Wolves regenerated Yellowstone's population of aspen, willow and cottonwood trees that was being steadily dismantled by elk, by halving their numbers. "If you want to nurture a forest, plant a wolf," Rundell writes. following their by
Each chapter is wondrous and fascinating, but each comes with a mighty kick to our destructive and complacent selfishness. The number of hares in Britain has declined by some 80 per cent in the last century as their habitats are torn up and built over. There's a similar statistic for most of the other creatures that have been driven out of their habitats, hunted for sport or for their dubious medical value, or been poisoned by pesticides. Climate change is accelerating this process.
The 22nd chapter is devoted to The Human in all its short-sighted foolishness and relays the story of the Sybilline books. I urge you to read it, but the nub of the issue is laid out by Rundell in the exntinction threat facing the Borneo elephant: "They are one victim of a far larger conundrum: that we have not risen, as a human species, to the concept of that which we cannot undo."
The Golden Mole is a treasure, both a n impassioned call to action and a loving homage to beauty and the miracle of life.
While you're here, a word about the extravagantly gifted Rundell, who is not only a prize-winning children's author but also wrote the fabulous and hugely surprising Super-Infinite, the biography of romantic poet John Donne, which won the Bailie-Gifford prize for non-fiction in 2022. I say surprising because I didn't think there was anything in the world that could persuade me to read a biography of Donne, let alone like it. A friend pestered and pestered and I gave in. Super-Infinite was one of the best books I read in 2023, one of the best biographies I've ever read. Rundell, it seems, can even do the impossible.