(Notes Towards) A Natural History of War

Gabrielle Hoad | (Notes Towards) A Natural History of War | 2024

“Perhaps the most striking aspect of the outdoor world is its peacefulness. Wander where you will along country lanes and footpaths, through deep woodlands or on the dunes and beaches of the sea coast, you cannot fail to notice the absence of organized hostility and open strife. Yet this apparent peace is in truth superficial. It cloaks a never-ending conflict, a relentless struggle to the death…”

The Wonders of Nature illustrated by C.F. Tunnicliffe (1940)

I encountered The Wonders of Nature during a residency with Megan Calver for our project Clouded Border (2021-22). Published in 1940, it turned out to be a useful signpost for a body of work that brought together the World War II landscape of Durlston and its current peacetime status as a National Nature Reserve. This extract, from a chapter entitled ‘War and Peace in Nature’, is attributed to Harold Bastin (1875-1962), a British entomologist, botanist, zoologist and photographer.

I remain curious about the effect of war on nature writing and how far authors writing during, between and just after the two World Wars saw the environment around them through the lens of conflict. The images above are extracted from a new short text that draws on accounts of the behaviour of wildlife during wartime as well as the frequent appropriation of terminology from the natural world to name military hardware and campaigns. It’s a work in progress that might become a publication – a sort of ‘bestiary’ perhaps – or part of the text within a collaborative moving image work.

 

Thanks to Lizzie Lloyd and my Camp Kin at the recent Camp Membership Writing In/As Art workshop for prompting me to take the plunge and make a proper start on this text, which has been hovering around me for a quite a while.