Britain’s Insects: A Field Guide to the Insects of Great Britain and Ireland

There are a great number of books out there which claim to be guides to Britain’s insects. However, the majority of them struggle to not only cover most of the main groups, but also they can be misleading, not sharing the other possibilities which the book wasn’t able to cover. With around 25,000 species of insect in Britain and Ireland alone, it’s understandable to see why many of these books fall short.

Paul D. Brock’s Britain’s Insects: A Field Guide to the Insects of Great Britain and Ireland manages to side step many of these problems. It covers an admirable percentage of the insects found in Britain, though some groups are more thinly represented than others, and every order gets a look in. This includes the more obscure groups, such as stick insects, lice and even the newly discovered webspinners.

The book understandably shows preference for the more eye-catching species as these are what most people will be interested in, and should you not be able to find what you have seen, it is a great launching point for further research. At a little over 600 pages it isn’t the easiest to take into the field, but makes a great reference guide for those who photograph insects and wish to research their finds once they return home.

This book is ideal for anyone interested in insects but not wanting to restrict themselves to a particular group.It has managed to pack in the information of several different guides, though if you are passionate about butterflies, for example, you would still want a dedicated guide to that group. Few people interested in insects wouldn’t want to have a copy and it would be especially useful for the budding entomologist and fascinated children. 

Book reviewed by Robert Jaques