A dream of jewelled fishes - John Aston

Chris Yates’s and Charles Rangely-Wilson’s books on fishing have created a market for well-written and tastefully produced books on angling – a market which John Aston’s first book certainly taps. It got admiring reviews in hardback, and is now reissued in B-format paperback. This is an angling autobiography that tells the author’s story from boyhood fishing in ponds among the West Yorkshire slag heaps to adult forays to Scottish lochs to fish for trout. But this is also a modern fishing book, by someone who grew up in the sixties and seventies and for whom therefore rock and roll was as important as fishing, and is therefore just as likely to express his passion for angling by reference to Pete Townshend or a Bob Dylan song. Witty, erudite, and full of superb descriptions of the landscapes where he fished and the quirky and eccentric individuals he fished with, John Aston’s book is not just for the committed fisherman but for anyone who appreciates fine writing about the countryside. The paperback cover retains the beautiful linocut illustration by Robert Gillmor, the acclaimed designer of all the Collins New Naturalist jackets. John Aston is a lawyer who has been fishing since the age of five. He has written many articles for the angling press in the UK and USA. He lives in North Yorkshire.