On the subject of animal protection, I'm not really into the activist side of things but I was very, very impressed by a recently published book about the struggles of an animal protection activist...it's called Bad Hare Days (Olympia Publishers) and it's by an Irish anti bloodsports campaigner.

He tells of his lifelong campaign to have the Irish Hare (known as Jack Rabbits in the USA) protected from a crazy "sport" called hare coursing which consists of setting greyhounds after live hares in large wired enclosure. Gamblers gather to place bets on the performance of the dogs, and many hares get savaged to death in the game.

But the book is not so much about this cruel sport as about the price campaigners had to pay for opposing it...Coursing has powerful backers in Ireland, including the country's prime minister and other leading politicians.

The author of the book and others were badly bullied and pushed around for their efforts and when the radical "Animal Liberation Front" began its own seperate campaign against hare coursing in Ireland (sabotaging coursing venues and releasing the captive hares) it was the peaceful campaigners that suffered the public and police backlash!

This book reads like a piece of thriller writing, and I just couldn't put it down. It certainly blows the lid off the Irish coursing organisations's attempt to portray their "sport" as a wonderful harmless pastime to the rest of the world.

The subject matter sounds interesting. I've always found the idea of hunting for sport to be ... barbaric is too kind of a word.