Lucy Jones (2)

I am not sure just how many foxes there are where I am living, but I see them darting across the roads at night, caught by the headlights of the car. There was even one brazen fox walking up the middle of the road at midnight once. These fleeting glimpses of our largest predator left in the UK are for me quite special, but for others, this animal is considered a nasty pest and is something to be vilified.

In this interesting account of our tempestuous relationship with the fox. Consider and cunning and crafty animal by most, Lucy Jones has delved into the folklore, fiction and her own family history and met with those that love and hate these intelligent creatures. This bang up to date account of foxes goes some way to demonstrating our complex relationship with the natural world too. To get a better understanding of the different perspectives, she joins a hunt and a later with the saboteurs of a following a hunt to get a better perspective as to how people feel about this animal and explores the issues that polarised people on the heated public debate on this subject.

Jones has written this book about vulpes vulpes with a considered and measured approach. You know whose side she is on, but she is prepared to talk about with people from each perspective and hear their views as well as taking the time to look at the evidence based on the facts and not the scaremongering from the press. Worth reading for anyone interested in the most recognisable of our wild creatures.… (more)

Well I know us booklovers aren't supposed to judge a book by its cover, but how Fantastic Mr Fox is this cover? The hypnotic amber eyes of the beautiful fox stare out from the front cover, almost daring you to have a peek inside...and I, for one, was completely powerless to resist.

A few months ago I wouldn't have been terribly interested in reading a book about foxes, but then a rumour started to spread in my street: a fox had been seen early in the morning walking down the middle of our street. A real live fox? In a housing estate in Gateshead, surely not! Possibly yes, having read Foxes Unearthed and found out some of the quite unbelievable places a fox has been spotted. City fox, Romeo, wins the award for the most unconventional place for a fox to live.

Without writing as if it is a textbook, Lucy Jones has introduced us to many fascinating facts about foxes. Foxes have been part of the British landscape for many years, we even use fox and foxy in our language. Aside from somebody saying they've been foxed or describing a lady as foxy or a vixen, there's also the eye-opening root of the word 'shenanigans'.

I loved the historical aspect of the book. I really enjoyed reading about foxes in Tudor times where they were thought to cure all manner of ills, although I wouldn't fancy using particular bits of foxes to cure a migraine or toothache. It certainly made for entertaining reading though.

Whichever side of the fence you sit on, be it foxes are vermin and should be destroyed or foxes are part of our landscape and should be cherished, there is something for everyone in Foxes Unearthed. Lucy Jones has done an amazing job of getting behind the scenes of both hunters and saboteurs to investigate the controversial subject of fox hunting, just don't ask Ricky Gervais what he thinks unless you have a spare few hours!

You don't have to be a nature or wildlife lover to enjoy Foxes Unearthed; it contains such a variety of information relating to foxes that some chapters will naturally resonate more than others. In Foxes Unearthed, Lucy Jones encapsulates such a range of information from fictional foxes and hidden homage in TV shows to the controversy of fox hunts and foxes being kept as pets. I certainly know a lot more about foxes now and it's really made me think about how foxes are rooted in our very history, both through our culture and our language. Surely something so incredibly priceless deserves to be preserved.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.… (more)

More a look into humans than the lives of foxes themselves.

As such it features a lot of historical anecdote and a lot of speculation - mostly noted as such in the text to be fair, and there is a pretty good list of references and further reading in the back. As with most pop-sci for ease of reading these aren't footnoted in the text. broadly divided into themes the books starts with perhaps the dullest section - the rise and fall of Fox in popular culture, whether it's as the cunning hero Reynard The Fox, through more tricky Dahl-esque tales, and the more modern villain. A bit of history, and lifestyle analysis then follows, mostly refuting or excusing the various myths that surround foxes, followed by a close examination of the elephant in the room - the Hunting debate.

The author manages to attend both a Meet and join with the sabs who disrupt them, which does give a slightly balanced view, and she allows the reader to make up their own mind - although it's fairly clear from early on which side she falls. Indeed it would highly unlikely for someone to write a book about a creature they genuinely believed to be vermin, and so most of the book is firmly on the side of the foxes, with the author never quite believing that some people genuinely can't enjoy such magnificent creatures.

I would have liked more personal connection to a few specific foxes - it is possible for urban foxes to become quite tame around humans, and a bit more on their biology and lifestyles, maybe more compare and contrast between the rural and urban animals. But as my given name is Reynard, I was always going to be a sucker for anything even slightly competently written around my totem creature, and this is an interesting and informative account of mankind's very mixed relationship with what is now the UK's largest predator.… (more)