About

Front cover
The English Love Affair with Nature

Hallo, I’m Ian Alexander.

Authors are supposed to demonstrate their special expertise in their subject, being expert falconers or gardeners or whatever.

The author of a book about a nation’s love of nature cannot claim to know more about love than anyone else; nor to be more particularly English, whatever that is; nor to have seen more than a tiny part of nature. But my own lifelong love is in a way a miniature figure of how my country loves nature: first one way, then another, then yet another: and in multiple ways all at once. I became fascinated by the question of how, why, and when a whole nation fell in love: and why I did.

I was the lead author of three books on software engineering, contributed chapters to two others, and published many peer-reviewed articles. Apart from writing, I enjoy gardening, photographing nature, reviewing books,  and giving talks. I’ve started a blog about humans and our world, to take an oblique look at the environmental crisis.

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The English seem unemotional … except for their passion for nature