Events of recent weeks may have encouraged some to think about longevity and constancy. But when we value “living memory” we seem able only to measure it in human terms. To be truly long-memoried on this Earth, you would probably have to be a Greenland shark. As Katherine Rundell reports, a Greenland shark presently cruising the dark depths of the Arctic Ocean might have been doing so even as the plague swept London. Its great-great-grandparents may have known Julius Caesar, so to speak. It takes 150 years for a female to reach sexual maturity. “For thousands of years Greenland sharks have swum in silence, as above ground the world has burned, rebuilt, burned again.” They also smell strongly of pee. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? When it comes to what we should do, however, things get a bit woolly. After a typically vivid account of seahorse courtship and reproduction, Rundell urges us to “remember the seahorse” every morning and “scream with awe and not stop screaming until we fall asleep” or, a bit more practically, to “refuse to eat anything that is taken from the ocean by overexploitative nonselective fishing”. Elsewhere, she makes the rather vague suggestion that we “urgently seek out ways to aid child nutrition” in impoverished countries, so that people there are not forced to hunt endangered creatures. It is a pity that this element of the book is so thin and impractical. Yet Rundell is incapable of writing a dull sentence and it could hardly be bettered as an exuberant celebration of everything from bats, crows and hedgehogs to narwhals and wombats As 2022 drew to a close, I noticed that many of the “best of the year” lists repeated one particular author’s name and book. Rundell’s selection is rangy and personalised. There’s bound to be animals one feels to have been unfairly overlooked, and I would have liked to see her on at least one bird of prey, or declining beetle, or endangered cat. The Bengal tiger would have been too much to ask: a whole book would be required to explore the references and resonances that accompany it. The lynx, though, is secretive and mysterious enough not to have already exhausted our cultural imaginations, and could fit snugly into one of these short entries. Some animals that would have most brilliantly galvanised Rundell in the telling and fit well into her format, rich as they are in folklore, misunderstanding and wild factoids, are doing just fine. The spotted hyena, much maligned and endlessly fascinating in terms of legend and science, by and large doesn’t need the help of a book like this. Rundell’s latest LRB piece has been published this month, and is on hummingbirds. As it’s not included here, maybe there’s a second edition of this golden treasury being planned.

Main image courtesy of Nina Subin Interview With Katherine Rundell, Author Of The Golden Mole – C&TH Book Club There is an obvious danger that a book like this could feel preachy, and leave the reader emotionally flattened by its mawkishness and relentless recitation of downbeat statistics. But Rundell is far too clever a writer to allow this to happen. In November’s C&TH Book Club , Belinda Bamber talks to Katherine Rundell about her new book, The Golden Mole, a gilt-edged treasury of animals that invites readers to reopen their eyes to the endangered glories of the natural world. Katherine has also just won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non Fiction 2022 for her previous book, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, a biography of the poet.BB: Your sense of wonder about the creatures you write about is infectious. Who inspires you in environmental activism? A book as rare and precious as a golden mole. A joyous catalogue of curiosities that builds into a timely reminder that life on planet is worth our wonder." BB: The alive-ness of your interest in the world electrifies and connects all your work. Do you worry that it’s filtered through a screen or smartphone for many children? My friend [the novelist] Eleanor Catton told me to read this; I am so grateful to her. The book, which contains 11 essays about politics, motherhood, vocation, writing, shines with a stark clarity; its boldness is in its simplicity. The title essay, The Little Virtues, argues that children should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones – “not caution but courage and a contempt for danger… not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.” I loved it more than any essays I’ve read for years. 2. Film The Golden Mole. And Other Living Treasure: Katherine Rundell - both versions signed by Katherine Rundell

BB: ‘There is nothing like climbing a drainpipe at night to remind you just how dark dark can be’ is a line from Rooftoppers. Do you like to live dangerously? Our desire to get close to the world’s wild creatures has often done them very little good,” writes Rundell. “Every species in this book is endangered or contains a subspecies that is endangered, because there is almost no creature in the world, now, for which that it not the case.”It is among my proudest boasts, that I was massive Rundell fan before she became a national treasure." Dolphins whistle to their young in the womb for months before the birth, and for two weeks afterward – the others in the pod remain quiet so as not to confuse the unborn calf as it learns its mother’s call. Dolphins whistle to their young in the womb for months before the birth (Image: Wullie Marr/DC Thomson)

Kate Nic Chonaonaigh, left, and Catherine Clinch in The Quiet Girl. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy KR: My colleagues at All Souls have always been very generous about my slightly idiosyncratic career!And the final criterion was just love: creatures I longed to have an excuse to spend a month or so reading books about. The Golden Mole – the only iridescent mammal, which does not know that it shines – is one of my favourites – and lent itself to the broader idea of golden and treasure. (In the sense that, what is the finest treasure? It’s the living world, and the earth it depends on.) Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t be enchanted, fascinated, & deeply concerned by this bestiary of the world’s most extraordinary & endangered animals. Despite being a firm fiction fan, Chris Deerin stumbled upon a slim volume of essays in 2022 that he can’t stop thinking about.