I confess that I have been slow to acknowledge that the Prince of Wales, with significant others, has penned a fat book on Harmony: a new way of looking at our world. This is a text which, I am told, is now available at well below Amazon prices in Bath's better cheap book stores.
Having been slow off the mark, I have now managed to read a Guardian review and a funny, if rather cruel, digest and feel as if I know the essence of its partial (in both senses) arguments.
The Digest begins ...
This is a call to revolution. Though obviously not the sort of revolution that seeks to get rid of a hereditary monarchy, because the Earth is under threat and Nature is very keen on royalty. That's why we have Queen bees and Emperor penguins. And if I've learned one thing in the more than 30 years I've been faffing around waiting to be king, it's that we have to listen to Nature. It's no good just talking to plants if you aren't willing to hear their replies. So this book, which has been dictated to me by Tony Juniper-Berry, Peter Penstemon and Diana Daffodil, is Nature's plea to us to save the world before it is too late.
Personally, I'm very sceptical about the idea of harmony as applied to human – nature systems, seeing nature as involving a dynamic and necessarily very edgy co-existence, and that it is this which gives it its resilience and diversity. I have written about this before, rather too obliquely, perhaps, and shall probably do again.
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