Animals; The Body; Keeping in Touch; Plants

Communications - probably the world's most frequently requested project topic and the one that librarians most dread. To some it means trains and boats and planes, to others, music, morse and mime, but to everyone, surely, new light and new ideas are as welcome as rain in Yorkshire. And here are four to refresh and cheer us. Who'd have thought, for instance, of Plants as a 'communications' title? Well, it's amazing - flowers to welcome, congratulate and console, floral clocks and mottos, poppies and palms for remembrance, and the bee's come-hither spelt out by every blossom. Animals is less about wagging tails and cocked ears than about how we communicate with and through animals ringing birds, marking sheep, whistling to and bewaring of dogs, animals symbolic and real in advertising and religion and as educators on film and in zoos. Body is more predictable - signs, costume, body language both conscious and unwitting, individual and massed. Keeping in Touch deals with the nature of messages, e.g. public/private, urgent/general, and how they're registered and delivered (from bullock cart to mobile 'phone in one photograph!).

This is a most satisfying and cohesive quartet, tightly bound by an author/photographer partnership whose own message is loud and clear. And so should ours be, for whosoever can devise a new angle on 'Communications' deserves to be cheered to the echo.