For a thousand years the nightingale has been the most celebrated song-bird in the western world. In French troubadour lyrics, Romantic poems, even wartime propaganda, its exquisite oratorical song has symbolized both the renewing powers of nature and human love. Yet the real nightingale is a drab-coloured migrant, whose song is reckoned by scientists to be no different from any other bird's - a proclamation of territorial rights. So why have humans always fallen under its spell? This book looks at the natural history as well as the literary history of the nightingale.