Naming of the Shrew, John Wright

The Naming of the Shrew is a charmingly quirky new book and is the product of many years’ obsession with the colourful, eccentric, misleading and sometimes rude Latin names we use to describe our natural world.

Why has the entirely land-loving Eastern Mole been named Scalopus aquaticus,or the Oxford Ragwort been called Senecio squalidus – ‘dirty old man’? What were naturalists thinking when they called a beetle Agra katewinsletae and a genus of fish Batman?

John Wright is a natural historian and the author of the River Cottage Handbooks Mushrooms, Edible Seashore, Hedgerow and Booze. A member of the British Mycological Society and a Fellow of the Linnean Society, John gives lectures on natural history and every year he takes around fifty ‘forays’, showing people how to collect food from hedgerow, shore, pasture and wood.