Matthew Oates is a naturalist, writer and poet who has been obsessed by Britain's butterflies since he was at school. Intimately acquainted with all Britain's native species, he has conducted most of his research on the Pearl-bordered Fritillary, Mountain Ringlet and Duke of Burgundy; his experiences are summarised in his 2015 book, In Pursuit of Butterflies. But no butterfly has entranced him as much as the elusive Purple Emperor - a butterfly we now understand much better thanks to his detailed and tireless observations, captured in His Imperial Majesty (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Matthew retired from his post as National Specialist on Nature with the National Trust in 2018, and dedicated his retirement to ensuring the future of his favourite butterfly. He writes regularly for The Times Nature Notebook column and in magazines, and lives on the Gloucestershire-Wiltshire border.

Foreword

Introduction
1 Starting out
2 Laudator temporis acti
3 Escape to the woods
4 Rebellion
5 Into the green

A digression, into names
6 Desperately seeking Rima
7 Walden
8 The long hot summer of 1976
9 The legacy of 1976

Alice Holt Forest
10 Out of the seventies

Winter
11 In and out of war: the early 1980s

Noar Hill
12 The return of the wanderer
13 Nineteen eighty-four and all that
14 A time of discovery

Autumn
15 High-blown years: the Great Storm and afterwards
16 Paradise regained: the great summer of 1989

Spring
17 Spring perfected
18 Moving on
19 High adventures in the mid-1990s

The New Forest
20 Summer of the Painted Lady
21 Leaving the nineties
22 Time out of time
23 The Emperor's return
24 Hairstreaks to the fore

Some Cotswold places
25 Of Iris and Adonis
26 A fall from grace

Summer
27 A tale of two butterflies
28 Adventures with caterpillars

Savernake Forest
29 It rained.
30 Fifty years on

Towards some meaning
Afterword: On Marlpost Road
Butterflies of the year

Bibliography
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Index of butterfly species
General index