The calendar year may start in January in the depths of winter but for most, the year begins with Spring. This is the first in Melissa Harrison’s stand-out series of anthologies based around the four seasons. I started reading it with the seasons, having started with Autumn which was outstanding. This one doesn’t quite reach that level of perfection.

Like the other volumes in the series, Spring is a miscellany of poetry, prose, and nature writing by both contemporary and past authors. The format remains the same, of keeping you to the end before revealing the author and the date that it is from – often with surprises in store when you realise that something you thought was of the now, is actually from the nineteenth century.

The biggest joy of this book, is the last item in the anthology, featuring as it does a place which exudes the very essence of Spring from somewhere that I know and love very, very well.

Like it’s sister book, Autumn, this is not just a collection of poetry, prose, and non-fiction but a narrative of the darkest season. It takes us through the cold winter months through, frosts and fog, and flurries of snow. We feel through the words the hard, frozen ground under foot, and the wildest of storms.

Diary entries keep us locked to natures calendar with its stories of winter survival and migratory escape. There are possibly more contemporary accounts in this volume than in Autumn but the writers still range across the centuries, and with the citations and dates not given until the end of each piece it is sometimes reassuringly hard to tell, and often a surprise!

The last few collected passages gently tease us of winter’s passing, and the promise of the season to come, echoing the hope that we all feel at the end of darkest of seasons.