Silas and Ethel Woodlock retire to spend their twilight years by the
sea, only to find themselves traumatised by herring gulls. London
journalist Stephen Osmer writes a provocative essay about two
people called Nicholas Royle, one a novelist, the other a literary
critic. Whether Royle, the literary critic, is having an affair with
the beautiful Lily Lynch, and has stolen and published Silas
Woodlock's short story, 'Gulls', becomes a race to the death for
at least one of the authors.
Playfully commenting on the main story are 17 'Hides': primarily
about birds, ornithology and films (including Hitchcock's), these
short texts give us a different view of the messy business of being human, the fragility of the physical world we inhabit and the nature of writing itself.
Witty as well as erudite and delightful in its wordplay, An English Guide to Birdwatching explores the fertile hinterland between fact and fiction. In its focus on birds, climate change, the banking crisis, social justice and human migration, it is intensely relevant to wider political concerns; in its mischief and post-modern (or 'post-fiction') sensibility, it celebrates the transformative possibilities of language and the mutability of the novel itself.

NICHOLAS ROYLE lives in Seaford
and is Professor of English at the
University of Sussex.
He is the author of the highly
acclaimed novel, Quilt ('delightfully
eccentric humour and impressive
linguistic experimentalism' Observer)
as well as seminal books on
literature, including The Uncanny
and, most recently, Veering.
His non-fiction, like his fiction, is
distinguished by playful language
and suggests a new way of seeing
the relationship between creative
and critical writing.