Skaife shares hopes for the future of the ravens at The Tower.

You can easily imagine my enthusiasm when I realized they have their own Instagram!! Turns out: my procrastination was a perk. I know I hung on to every word, but by the end…I still had not gotten my fill of the seven ravens that call The Tower of London home. Skaife seems to be a natural story-teller. This book amused & delighted me as I read it, and again whenever parts popped into my head. Months ago, I read a blurb about The Ravenmaster in The Week magazine and I had been trying to get to it since then.

Reading notes And now for something completely different - enough legal, medical, science, activist or other 'heavy' books i have to concentrate on. I had wanted a relaxing book after the heavy stuff I like to read, and this was certainly that but if I hadn't of skimmed the last chapters I would certainly have fallen asleep.Ī 3.5 star book, rounded down as it isn't even close to a 4 star. I didn't not enjoy the book, the writing was chatty and friendly, but there seemed to be a lot of filler, possibly because without it the book would have been too short. The history of them is mostly fake, as he reveals which was also a revelation to me. He wrote about their personalities but he had so little interaction with them personally - deliberately, he wanted them to be as wild as they can be under the circumstances - apart from putting them to bed at night (or into their enclosure to be accurate) that the anecdotes aren't very revealing of them, more of him. The raven stuff was interesting but not very. The author would be a great companion over lunch or with a group of people who have never got anything to say, he'd keep the party going as it were. Yay for blowing up people and carrying 100lb (or whatever) backpacks and mucking in with the lads in a cold, muddy forest. It is mostly a litany of all he achieved and how great he was and how great army life was and how he couldn't have achieved all that in any other way but the army. It was 50% ravens and 50% the author's life in the army since he was 16 up until he became a Yeoman of the Guard at the Tower of London.

The author has a rather dry sense of humour! The book was not quite what the title implies. An incredible sight, though maybe not for everyone.' I rushed over and saw Erin and Rocky devouring a bird: they were actually eating the pigeon from the inside out while it was still alive. Not long ago I was taking a tour around when I heard a lot of screaming and crying from people in the queues by the Jewel House.

'Two ravens can kill and strip down a pigeon in a matter of minutes.

Ravenmaster book