The Guardian is a newspaper of many idiosyncrasies - of which its much-loved Country Diary column is one.

The column is a small snatch of usually exquisite prose that sits proudly on the paper's leader page, and has done for 103 years.

This book is a celebration of those dispatches from the countryside. It was launched in typically eccentric style: atop Snowdonia's Cader Idris in September, "with wine and nibbles".

Edited by the newspapers northern editor, and beautifully illustrated by Clifford Harper, it tells the constantly changing story of the flora and fauna of these Isles.

Contributions vary from renowned naturalists to keen amateurs and even one of the paper's printers when one day's copy got lost in the ether in the early days of computer technology.

There are families woken at midnight to be shown a glow worm, a beached shark whose corpse must be saved from the council's bin men, and a black-headed gull that arrived as a refugee from Nazi-invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939.

In collating a century of observations, the diarists offer a unique view of this country's changing natural history, as intensive agriculture did for many a species of bird and plant.

It is also a wonderful document of social history of the 20th century. Wainwright offers insights into the writers' lives and they, in turn, give us a glimpse of Britain as it once was.