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England’s coastal heritage – a review of progress since 1997

properties are still served by sewers, drains and service channels providing secure and happy homes for rats. Even spotless kitchens harbour crevices and food scraps under or behind appliances yielding comfortable out-of-reach homes for roaches. As the author observes ‘The creatures we call pests have stayed with us through a century in which housing and health officials and ecologists and pesticide proponents alike have promised modern and healthy living environments.’ Yet the author’s work would have been more encouraging had she added more positively that any attempt to rid ourselves of pests – these and others – is bound to prove fruitless – simply because they flourish under exactly the same conditions that we do. Certainly we can, and no doubt will, continue to do whatever we can to minimise their numbers. But we can still only do our best individually by shielding ourselves from their adverse consequences. By protecting from their contact all we use and consume for example. By not exposing ourselves to canals, ponds and other stagnant waters contaminated with rat-borne diseases. By not using supposedly protective electrical devices which explode the bodies of insects and distribute their fragments through the air we breathe and live in. By minimising the quantities of food and other organic scraps we leave lying around – down to the smallest crumbs. And above all by never assuming that any of them have gone, or ever will go, away. All of which may, of course, anyway already seem obvious to anyone likely to read this book.