Contents

2 Laudator temporis acti

3 Escape to the woods

5 Into the green

A digression, into names

6 Desperately seeking Rima

8 The long hot summer of 1976

9 The legacy of 1976

Alice Holt Forest

10 Out of the seventies

11 In and out of war: the early 1980s

12 The return of the wanderer

13 Nineteen eighty-four and all that

14 A time of discovery

15 High-blown years: the Great Storm and afterwards

16 Paradise regained: the great summer of 1989

17 Spring perfected

19 High adventures in the mid-1990s

20 Summer of the Painted Lady

21 Leaving the nineties

22 Time out of time

23 The Emperor’s return

24 Hairstreaks to the fore

Some Cotswold places

25 Of Iris and Adonis

26 A fall from grace

27 A tale of two butterflies

28 Adventures with caterpillars

Savernake Forest

29 It rained …

30 Fifty years on

Towards some meaning

Afterword: On Marlpost Road

Butterflies of the year

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

Index of butterfly species