He is the poet among modern ecologists, a natural philosopher who , whether he is writing about trees or rainbows, an iceberg or a piece of chalk, never takes a fact without linking it to an idea, or an idea without connecting it to a fact. His book dispenses information in the language of the imagination, and by peeling back the film by which everything appears dully familiar, reveals a vision of the world miraculously transfigured
Michael Holroyd
The Times
Collis' divine gift is to explain the extraordinary nature of the ordinary
Sunday Times
A philosopher who had a shining view of the natural world, and was able to divine the magic inherent in phenomena so commonplace that we take them for granted
Guardian
These jottings establish the man as one of the greatest recorders of English agricultural life
Val Hennessey
Daily Mail
A little classic
The Oldie
Engagingly conversational... his writings are, in every sense, down to earth. He is compulsively curious about how things work, whether animal or mechanical. Collis finds contentment in good, decent work and simple pleasures. His writings are a comfort, now as then, in difficult political and economic times
Iain Finlayson
Saga Magazine