Nebraska

Pitchfork publish regular reviews of what they consider significant albums of the past, and last week it was the turn of Springsteen's Nebraska.

At the time it came out in 1982, I would have been absolutely oblivious to it, but I did buy it not long after I got into Springsteen, around 1987. By that time, the muted initial response it had received had begun to dissipate, and various other artists had started to imitate its ultra-stripped-down approach. To be honest, that became a bit annoying – recording everything acoustically on a cassette player doesn't automatically confer integrity, depth and meaning on an album.

But for Nebraska, it was undoubtedly the right decision. Even though the recordings are so homepsun that at times you can hear Springsteen's chair creaking, the effect isn't to create an intimacy with the listener, but rather, as the article says, to isolate the artist from his subjects, allowing him to observe and report dispassionately.

Songs such as Highway Patrolman and Atlantic City are like short stories (the former was the inspiration for the film The Indian Runner), but in many of the songs here, what's not said is as important as what is. You don't know exactly what it is that the protagonist of Atlantic City has agreed to do, just that he's desperate and willing to try anything.

I like the more obviously personal Used Cars a lot, as well as the yin and yang of State Trooper and Open All Night, with the latter offering one of the album's few glimmers of light. The article highlights the echoey, early rockabilly sound, and they're right – it's far closer to that in spirit than to folk music, for all that it's acoustic.

I go back and listen to it every now and then, and there's no doubt that it's one of Springsteen's most important albums.

Forward Prizes 2018 shortlist

The shortlist for this year's Forward Prizes has been announced. They look reasonably varied to me, with some new names cropping up there, although as always they're pretty much dominated by the major presses.

I'll have to try to catch up with some poetry reading, to include some of these, over the next few months. Vahni Capildeo, who won the Best Collection Prize in 2016 , is nominated again – I enjoyed her last book, and I'll look forward to reading this one.

Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear?

We recently ran an excellent feature by Lev Parikian in Bird Watching, about the theme of this book. I can recommend it very highly, whether you're already a birder, a lapsed birdwatcher, someone dabbling around the edges but determined to learn more, or an absolute beginner. Above all, it's about what it means to be a birdwatcher, and why building a connection to nature matters. Try it.

Strange spring

It's been a funny old spring, bird-wise. The cold temperatures right into the first week of May, and the northerly winds that brought them, held up the arrival of many migrants, and even now, I've yet to hear a Cuckoo, have barely heard or seen any Willow Warblers, and missed Wheatear altogether (although that was more that I haven't been to any suitable habitat, really). Hirundines and Swifts have been sparse, although numbers are starting to grow now.

On the other hand, some species, such as Yellow Wagtail, appeared in large groups when they did arrive, and there have been decent passages of things like Black Tern (plus a couple of White-winged Black Terns). Up at Frampton Marsh RSPB last week, there were some good waders – lots of Dunlin and Avocets, a few Curlew Sandpipers and Little Stints, and Greenshanks.

Some of these things may be connected to longer term declines or increases, but others are part of what makes migration, and birdwatching, so endlessly fascinating. Things turn up where they shouldn't, or when they shouldn't, or both, and so you never know quite what you'll find when you leave the house.

It's something I touched on in my book A Sky Full Of Birds – you can buy it here, or if you'd prefer a signed copy I have paperbacks available. Just email me if you're interested.

Battle Royal and Blood Royal

Over the last few weeks I've read Hugh Bicheno's two-part history of the Wars of the Roses, Battle Royal and Blood Royal. They're extremely readable, with plenty of in-depth material that I hadn't come across before, and he's particularly good at looking at what the motivations of the participants might have been, the more obscure members of the gentry as well as the big names.

But at times, he's prone to making big claims without producing much evidence to back them up, most notably regarding the legitimacy of Edward IV. Now you can make a good case for him not having been the son of Richard of York, but some of the reasons Bicheno gives don't really hold up. Yes, Edward was a lot taller than either of his supposed parents, but his brother George and one of his sisters were also notably tall, so I'm not sure what that proves. Given that much of his argument, especially in the second book, depends on you accepting his claim, this unwillingness to go into detail is annoying at best.

What also gives me cause for concern about these claims is that Bicheno is rather slapdash in his approach to minor details. He repeats the old myth about the Battle of Losecote Field being so called because the rebels threw away their livery as they fled. In fact, it was never called that until the 19th century, and the name more likely comes from 'hlose-cote field', a locally common name referring to a cottage with pig sties.

Similarly, in his description of the Battle Of Edgecote, he talks about the slaughter of the Welsh Yorkist troops as they fled, and says that Welsh Road runs through the battlefield, implying that it is so called because it's where the slaughter took place. But Welsh Road actually gets its name because it's an old drovers' route through the Midlands, used by Welsh drovers to avoid the main turnpikes. That's all pretty well attested, and long stretches of it even now show all the signs of having been so.

Nit-picking, maybe, but it makes me wonder about the lack of evidence for his bigger claims.

New-look England

Well, maybe Ed Smith is going to prove me wrong straight away, which can only be a good thing. I agree with most of what Jonathan Agnew says here. Buttler is, as Smith has said, a unique talent, and I'd always want to find a way to keep him in the test set-up. He's the sort of player that could win you a game in a session, and for all the nay-saying about him being a 20/20 player, there are others who have made the switch successfully. David Warner, for example.

Bess looks a good choice, too. He probably won't get a lot to do in these first couple of tests, but it's a bold selection.