Book review: The Beauty in the Beast, by Hugh Warwick

Hugh Warwick loves hedgehogs. He has spent his life writing about them, talking about them, rescuing them and most people in these parts know him from his vocal role opposing the 2003 hedgehog cull in the Uists. He even has a tattoo of a hedgehog on one leg. As it didn’t hurt as much as he expected, he set out to spend time with 15 species – and those people who are just as passionate about them as he is about hedgehogs – to choose one for the other leg.

The Beauty in the Beast

By Hugh Warwick

Simon & Schuster, 320pp, £14.99

They’ll have, you realise, to be pretty passionate to match his own love of the prickly beasts. “A night out with Nigel, his favourite hedgehog, “changed my entire relationship with the natural world as we gazed into each other’s eyes, nose-to-nose on a country lane.”

The competition for the second tattoo is an attempt to broaden his horizons. The ambassadors he discovers for each of the 15 animals on his shortlist have one thing in common. They are all mad about their chosen species. While that enthusiasm is beguiling, the intensity with which they pursue their hobbies does raise a few questions: it becomes very easy, for example, to empathise with the wife of the badger man who worries a lot more about her son in Afghanistan than her husband’s obsession.

These passionate animal defenders are not reluctant to interfere with nature. At the same time as they defend the animal rights of honeybees, they are prepared to kill them for microscope examination. They store specimens of dragonfly larvae and keep cats in at night to protect bats. Eagle owls are culled and sparrows are caught for ringing. The moths woman shows Warwick her collection, “pinned and crucified in perpetuity”. There are signs that all of this bothers Warwick too, even as he relishes his human subjects’ eccentricities.

Not everyone shares their enthusiasms. Beavers are not popular with landowners, farmers or fishermen. Other motorists might be irritated by a sign on a car window saying, “I brake for frogs”. In this country, we dote on robins but everywhere else they are seen as pests.

The existence of so many societies and volunteer groups committed to a particular species is a revelation. There is a working group on urban sparrows and a Butterfly Conservation Trust, a British Dragonfly Society and a Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Scheme. As well as an annual National Bat Conference there is a Mammal Society Conference. Volunteers can take part in sophisticated training in care and recording.

Each ambassador takes Warwick to meet their chosen animal friends. Some apologised for seeming to have such a lonely hobby but, as one remarked, “I like being alone” and there is nothing wrong with that. But the stories make it clear that they are not alone at all. They are at peace with their friends; they see the beauty in the beast. There were times when Warwick felt like an intruder into their world.

The descriptions of Warwick’s journeys show the hidden wonders of wildlife in this country. It is only because of these devoted advocates that the information about the animals’ habits and needs are recorded.

How else would we know about the “consummate ease with which the dragonfly commands its element” or that only female bees can sting? We learn that house sparrows are able to exist across so much of the world because they have the “ability to tolerate so much contact with people”: ironically, their ambassador declares that he isn’t. It might be pushing it a bit, though, to try to make us keen on adders. Their ambassador had to get his hair cut at the front because snakes kept gathering in his fringe, but he kept his ponytail as he didn’t “want to be thought of as normal”.

The only disappointment is that, although another of Warwick’s job descriptions is photographer, the book has no pictures. Surely he must have taken some?

As for which beast won the competition for the second tattoo? You’ll have to read the book to find out – but that is certainly not a hardship.