THE STREAM. By Brian Clarke.

2000 1st edition. 8vo (157 x 240mm). Pp174. End-paper maps. Pale yellow boards, spine titled in gilt.

"The most significant book of its kind that I have read since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring." David Arnold-Forster, chief executive of English Nature. "A few protesters aside, the announcement of an industrial park in a depressed rural area is widely welcomed. It promises new jobs, an influx of new blood and a return to prosperity. Some distance away, in a small valley with a stream running through it, the management of a farm passes from father to son, after years of wrangling between them about the way the farm should be run. Over time - and unnoticed by anyone - the impact of the new development on the surrounding land and the effects on the valley of the way the farm is now managed, begin to compound one another. The pressures are felt most powerfully in the stream. Little by little, the small creatures that live in the stream and the birds and animals dependent on it, become sucked into a mute and desperate struggle for survival."