Blackwell’s Broad Street Nature Day: Jeremy Mynott ‘Birds in the Ancient Worlds

In celebration of the Oxford Festival of Nature, Blackwell’s Broad Street will be hosting a day of free Nature talks and activities.

At 1pm we will be joined by Jeremy Mynott who will be discussing his book ‘Birds in the Ancient World’. Then at 3pm Leif Bersweden will be exploring his search for 52 species of Orchid in ‘The Orchid Hunter’.

In the Children’s Department there will be nature themed storytime and craft activities.

Jeremy Mynott – ‘Birds in the Ancient World’

‘Birds in the Ancient World’ offers a fresh account of Ancient Greek and Roman civilisation illustrated through the relationship between humankind and birds.
It explores the numerous and varied roles birds played in daily life: as portents of weather, markers of time, their use in medicine, hunting, and farming, and also as messengers of the gods.

We learn how birds were perceived – through quotations from well over a hundred classical Greek and Roman authors, all of them translated freshly into English, through nearly 100 illustrations from ancient wall-paintings, pottery and mosaics, and through selections from early scientific writings, and many anecdotes and descriptions from works of history, geography and travel.

Jeremy will be discussing this rich and fascinating material, using birds as a prism through which to explore both the similarities and the often surprising differences between ancient conceptions of the natural world and our own. His book is an original contribution to the flourishing interest in the cultural history of birds and to our understanding of the ancient cultures in which birds played such a prominent part.

Jeremy Mynott is the author of ‘Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience’ (2009), a book exploring the variety of human responses to birds, described by reviewers as ‘the finest book ever written about why we watch birds’ (Guardian) and ‘a wonderful rumination on birds and birders through space and time for anyone interested in our relationship with nature’ (THES). He has also published an edition and translation of Thucydides in the series, ‘Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought’ and, more recently, ‘Knowing your Place’, an account of the wildlife in a tiny Suffolk hamlet. He has broadcast on radio and television, is a regular reviewer for the TLS and wildlife magazines, a founder member of ‘New Networks for Nature’, and is the former Chief Executive of Cambridge University Press and an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

This talk is free to attend, please register your interest in advance. For all enquiries please email [email protected] or call 01865 333623.