The Royal Entomological Society Book of British Insects

Many birdwatchers also take a keen interest in insects, with butterflies, moths and dragonflies generally the most popular. There already exist good field guides that help the interested amateur put a name to other insects, but it soon becomes apparent that these only scratch the surface of the entomological world, depicting some of the more obvious species but omitting many thousands of others.

Delving further into this fascinating world can be a daunting prospect but Peter Barnard has produced an extremely useful and authoritative overview. This is not an identification guide, nor does it list all of the 24,043 species individually. Instead, the book discusses each insect order in its own chapter. Within these, each insect family is described in more detail, and a current list of genus names is given. Most usefully, there are pointers to the best references to consult if you wish to identify species within the family.

This book could easily have been a very dry tome, but is well written and well produced. Moreover, there are hundreds of excellent photographs to break up the text. Highly recommended for the budding entomologist.

Book reviewed by Andy Musgrove