Always Germaine

IN 2001, at the age of 62, Germaine Greer decided to acquire a rainforest – 60 acres of abandoned dairy farm in south-east Queensland that had been ruined by decades of wasteful timber felling, unwisely-introduced species and commercially-motivated despoliation.

White Beech is her account of her decade-long attempt to “rehabilitate”

(her preferred word) this steep rocky country, to allow the complexities of the ancient ecosystem to reassert itself. The work was complex and painstaking, but by the end of the decade she has seen a wealth of traditional fauna and flora return to Cave Creek.

As you’d expect from Greer, this becomes a dense, angry and scintillating exploration of Australian history, botany, zoology and politics, plus an extraordinary blend of exhaustive nature notes, assiduous scholarship and biting polemic. There is far more detail than the average reader could possibly need, but Greer’s almost mystical sense of mission is utterly infectious, as is her ability to match huge passion with steely argument.

Dan Brotzel Farmageddon by Philip Lymbery with Isabel Oakeshott, (Bloomsbury £12.99, ebook £7.49) 4/5 

PRODUCING enough cheap food to feed the world is one of the biggest dilemmas facing politicians today. But doing that without destroying the plants and the animals is equally troubling.

The two should go hand-in-hand, but somewhere along the way those in charge of producing our food have switched to producing food at the best financial return.

In Farmageddon Philip Lymbery tells the true story of how the world is being mortgaged for profit in shocking details and with startling consequences. Factory- farmed food clearly does not mean better food and the world’s health is paying the price.

Roddy Brooks Breach Of Promise To Marry: A History Of How Jilted Brides Settled Scores by Denise Bates (Pen & Sword History £12.99) 3/5

THESE days weddings might be big business for venues, caterers and dress shops, but from the late 18th Century up to 1970, jilted brides could rake in the cash thanks to a now defunct law.

Breach of promise to marry allowed women to go to court to claim back compensation for anything from damage to reputation, to being less likely to find another husband, to even good old-fashioned heartbreak.

Inevitably, a fair number of bridezillas used the law for ill-gotten gains from unsuspecting men who’d never proposed.

Stories of either the man or woman being wronged are fascinating, but unfortunately Bates is hindered by the lack of detail available from court reports of the time. However, there’s an incredibly detailed amount of information on the law that can’t fail to interest history buffs and legal eagles alike.

Katie Archer Death from the Skies by Dietmar Suss (OUP £30) 3/5

A BOOK that really lives up to its title as it describes the British and German bombing offensives in the Second World War, and how the respective civilian populations survived. It is a story of horror, death and devastation on an apocalyptic style as both countries literally executed people by the thousands in pitiless blitzes that were ultimately as futile as they were ferocious.

The British may have been the first sufferers but they more than got their own back once they got into their stride and launched 1,000-bomber raids against such cities as Hamburg and Berlin, not to mention Dresden. German academic Suss is an even-handed as one would want, and attacks the mass air raids as crimes against humanity. Neither British, nor German morale was broken nor was the war effort of either country stopped. Yet, both countries continued to rain down death from the skies, and many nowadays regard mass bombing as just another weapon of war.

Demons – Our Changing Attitudes to Alcohol, Tobacco and Drugs by Virginia Berridge (OUP £16.99) 4/5

WHATEVER is your fancy – whether it be a drink, a smoke or a suspect substance, you will always find that at certain times you would have been allowed to enjoy all three, while at other times you would have been frowned upon for taking any.

Gazza, for instance, is the symbol of the once-rampant football drinking culture; Sherlock Holmes injected cocaine and kids used to spend their pocket money on a sly Woodbine behind the bike sheds. All that appears to have changed now. But has it? With senior North-East police officers wanting drug laws relaxed or scrapped altogether, Virginia Berridge demonstrates that humans are a contrary lot, and it takes a lot to put us off either a pint, a puff or a pill.

Myself, I blame the great creator for giving us bodies that make us suffer for enjoying ourselves, and as a gout-sufferer, I know from experience how painful it can be just to enjoy yourself.

Steve Craggs