The world of NATURE NOTES is a place where the great and the good become the small and the furry; the edible and the biodegradable. The Labour cabinet is a collection of nuts; Ken Livingstone is a newt - 'pissedasanewtus'; Iain Duncan Smith metamorphosises into 'the Hardly Ever Spotted Moth'. But on the receiving end of the most biting of Brookes' satire is the much discussed Bush/Blair coalition. The Dogs of War circle, including the Poodle and the US Bloodhound: 'Essentially dumb, and at bottom touchingly close to one another'. The Red-necked grebe, genus name 'Dubya texassa', does a war dance with the Brown-nosed Blair; Donald Rumsfeld - Rumsfeld obliteratus - appears as the Hawk Moth. Covering September 2001 to May 2004, the fourth volume of NATURE NOTES is a wonderfully revealing commentary on the current obsession with Wars on Terror, the continuing spin of the New Labour government, as well as being a hilarious and incisive succession of merciless character studies.