A VIEW TO DEATH IN THE MORNING: HUNTING AND NATURE THROUGH HISTORY. By Matt Cartmill.

1993 1st edition. Large 8vo (159 x 241mm). Ppxvi,331. B/w photographs and illustrations. Red and black boards.

This is Matt Cartmill's fascinating examination of hunting throughout human history and how it relates to philosophy, biology and culture, with a hint of ideology thrown in. The dust-jacket blurb bills the author as 'humanist-anthropologist Matt Cartmill', and indeed, the author's highly erudite, free-ranging enquiry is severely hampered by those two adjectives. Well worth a read in any case. Chapters include: The killer ape; The rich smell of meat and wickedness; Virgin huntresses and bleeding feasts; The White Stag; The sobbing deer; The noise of breaking machinery; The sorrows of Eohippus; The sick animal; The Bambi Syndrome; A fatal disease of nature; the spirit of the beast; A view to death in the morning.