Another glossy photo book manages to find room for a crop formation…


Flicking through the new UK edition of the book ‘The Earth From The Air: 365 Days’, a collection of colour aerial views from around the world by Yann Arthus-Betrand, reveals the presence of a crop circle, for those who like to keep tabs on this kind of thing.

The tome, presented in this edition as a ‘day-book’, features as its March 31st entry the wide ring formation (the one with semi-circular grooves in the lay – see photo) which appeared at Avebury, Wiltshire on 2nd August 1998.

Why this particular formation was chosen, as opposed to some of the far more imaginative designs from that year, isn’t clear, but it may be that the author is trying to convey something closer to the public perception of what a crop circle is.

Though the visual focus is purely on the formation (there’s no landscape visible, only the field), the accompanying caption, headed ‘Agricultural Graphics’ (now there’s a new term!), manages to barely mention crop circles at all, but instead discusses the preponderance and importance of grain fields to middle England, mentioning only as a brief aside the mysterious shapes which sometimes appear in them.

In fact the crop circle photo is one of the less striking pictures in a book crammed with very impressive and sometimes surreal images of many varied landscapes as seen from above.

‘The Earth From The Air: 365 Days’ is published by Thames & Hudson and currently costs £19.99 in UK branches of W H Smith bookshops.