Do Not Call the Tortoise

Do Not Call the Tortoise is a collection of essays about ignorance, Coleridge, Darwin, cats and, rather daringly, the meaning of life. All these are viewed from a fresh perspective which attempts to see the world without our cultural preoccupations. It champions immediacy and our own experience rather than theories and media information. This perspective was first set out in the book STA, now published online at sta-serial.com

Gareth Howell-Jones runs the Hay Festival Bookshop.

“Imagine a 21st century Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, drenched in Wordsworth and laced with Darwin. That's something - but only something - of this vital, prescient, kind and companionable book. Howell-Jones has no illusions. In lesser writers that can breed cynicism and world-weariness. Not here. Here, instead, is the wisdom of the hedgerow and the mountain; the power of entanglement; the electricity of encounter. Marvellous and marvellously important.” (Charles Foster)