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Professor Philip Howse will give an illustrated talk about his forthcoming publication Giant Silkmoths – Colour, Mimicry & Camouflage on Friday October 21st at 11.00 am at the “Autumn 2011  Book ‘n Author’ Week” Literary Festival at the Eype Centre for the Arts near Bridport.

Philip Howse’s talk will be an exclusive preview of Giant Silkmoths – Colour, Mimicry & Camouflage, that will be published in November 2011. This publication by the prizewinning author explores the fascinating world of the giant silkmoths and their surprising strategies to protect themselves. Lavishly illustrated with magnificent photographs by Kirby Wolfe, an expert on silkmoths, this volume presents the grandeur and the fascinating natural history of these beautiful and exquisite insects.

Philip Howse has published books and research articles on insect behaviour and ecology. He has developed environmentally-friendly methods for the control of insect pests, recognised by a number of awards including the OBE. After a career spent mainly at Southampton University, he has now retired but continues writing about the insects that have fascinated him since childhood. His book Butterflies – Messages from Psyche won a bronze medal at the Independent Publisher Book Awards 2011 in the category “Environment/Ecology/Nature”.

The “Autumn 2011 Book ‘n Author Week” will take place from Thursday 13th until Friday 21rst of October 2011 at the Eype Centre for the Arts. If you would like to know more about the festival’s schedule and ticket prices, please access the official website of the Eype Centre for the Arts.

If you would like to pre-order Giant Silkmoths – Colour, Mimicry & Camouflage, please visit the Papadakis online shop.

Seeds: Time Capsules of Life by Rob Kesseler and Wolfgang Stuppy features in the list of top 10 botany books in the Times‘s Eureka Magazine.

Seeds: Capsules of Life is part of the award-winning series Pollen: The Hidden Sexuality of Plants, Fruit: Edible, Inedible, Incredible and The Bizarre and Incredible World of Plants. In Seeds, artist Rob Kesseler and Wolfgang Stuppy, seed morphologist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, present a natural history of seeds, illustrated with close-up photographs and scanning electron micrographs. The images afford an unprecedented view into a most astonishing microcosm, where the tiniest examples present us with the most exquisite beauty and sophistication.

Seeds has been described as “wondrous” (BBC Wildlife) and “very impressive, as a work of science as well as a work of art” (Frits Adema in Blumea). To purchase a copy, please visit the Papadakis online shop.

Peter Forbes, winner of the 2011 Warwick Prize for Writing, features Philip Howse’s Butterflies – Messages from Psyche in his top 10 books on colour, published on the Guardian website. Colour was also the theme of this year’s Warwick Prize for Writing, a £50,000 prize awarded every two years by Warwick University in Coventry.

Forbes’s favourite image in Butterflies shows the caterpillar of the puss moth. When alarmed, it inflates its head, showing two dark eye-spots in a red-ringed face to confuse predators. Peter Forbes writes:

To see Peter’s other top 10 books, visit the Guardian’s website.

Butterflies – Messages from Psyche by Philip Howse is available to buy from the Papadakis online shop.

Philip Howse’s Butterflies – Messages from Psyche features in Simon Barnes’s ‘Wild Notebook’ column in the Times. Barnes describes the book as “extraordinary” and its author as a “maverick lepidopterist”. To buy a copy of Butterflies please visit our online shop.

Alex Bernasconi’s Wild Africa has received another glowing review. The latest issue of Digital Photographer magazine describes the book as “a stunning hardback filled with unique pictures” that gives “a fresh perspective on Africa.”

Alex Bernasconi is a creative wildlife and landscape photographer with a deep love for nature. He has won many awards for his photographs including a gold medal in the Trierenberg Super Circuit last year and multiple prizes in the International Photography Awards. Wild Africa is his first photography book, offering beautiful panoramas, stunning aerial photographs and intimate close-ups of nature’s most fearsome predators. The preface was written by Saba Douglas-Hamilton, wildlife conservationist, television presenter and trustee of Save the Elephants, who describes Bernasconi’s portraits of individual animals as “some of the most stunning images in the book. He has caught some deeply private moments … the profound, undisturbed, contemplative sentience of creatures with a different but parallel intelligence.”

Wild Africa is available to order from the Papadakis online shop.

Joseph Giacomin’s Thermal – Seeing the World Through 21st Century Eyes features in the Royal Photographic Society Journal this month. The article describes the rarity and difficulties of thermal photography, which can produce insights into whole new world defined by heat. The journal describes: “While the dancer in the image is real, the question marks on the wall behind her do not really exist except as a record of the passage of a change in temperature.” For more fascinating insights, order your copy of Thermal from the Papadakis online shop.

The Stocking Book has received a fantastic review in Style Magazine, who describe the book as “charming, witty and saucy”, and “an excellent read for anyone with an interest in fashion”.

To buy your very own fabulous copy of the Stocking Book, visit the Papadakis online shop.

Renowned Lepidopterist Clive Farrell discussed his passion for butterflies on BBC Breakfast this morning, Friday 17th December. Farrell is the founder of St Albans Butterfly World, the world’s largest butterfly walk-through experience, funding the majority of the £27 million project himself. Through his dedication, he hopes to stem the rapid population decline of British butterflies, having already rescued one species, the Blue Adonis, from the brink of extinction. When completed in 2011, Farrell’s butterfly dome will be home to no less than 10,000 tropical butterflies.

‘Natural World’ on BBC will also be exploring why some butterfly species are in decline, and why they are an object of fascination and enduring appeal not just to conservationists, but to many people worldwide.

For a further insight into the spectacular world of butterflies see Butterflies: Messages from Psyche by Prof. Philip Howse. Beautifully illustrated and written by an author who is a pioneer in his field, Butterflies is sure to delight any nature enthusiast.

Butterflies: Messages from Psyche by Philip Howse received a glowing review from Simon Barnes in The Times on Saturday 11th September. Barnes describes it as “the most visually exciting book of the year”, going on to say “Howse has put together a teasing and brilliant treat; a piece of work that is designed to dazzle and boggle and bewilder; a feast of contradictions.”

Alternatively, you can view the digital version on the Times website

To buy a copy of the book please click here: www.papadakis.net

Philip Howse’s Butterflies: Messages from Psyche received a glowing review from the Independent‘s Michael McCarthy on Friday 9th July. “Very occasionally a book comes along which enables you to see the world in a different way;” McCarthy writes, “and I have just discovered one.”

Alternatively, see the digital version at the Independent‘s website:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/michael-mccarthy-such-intoxicating-displays-of-mimicry-2021954.html