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2. They are now obsolete. The victim stood on a platform in front of a dial. Insert an old penny and the machine would loudly announce your weight in stones and pounds. A comedian of the time quipped that when his wife tried it the machine said: ‘One at a time, please.’
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3. T. S. Eliot was always held up as the example of a modern poet at school, and, like everyone else, we read and reread The Waste Land.
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4. I went on to play for Cambridge University which means I have an unofficial quarter blue. It would not have been sufficient to land me a job in the City.
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5. The vintage ‘autostrop’ is currently selling online for about £60.
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7 Flowers
1. I have since heard that the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust is beginning a restoration of Ham Hill and all except the rare orchids can be found again.
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2. It was based on a true event, the visit of the president’s wife to Barham Women’s Institute in 1942.
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3. Homosexual acts between consenting persons were not decriminalised until 1967, two years after I went up to King’s.
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8 Three Lobes
1. I have mentioned my second-year field trip back to western Wales in Chapter 4, when I discovered my talent for finding fossils.
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2. I described the adventures of fieldwork in this remote area, long before the invention of the satellite telephone, in the opening chapter of Life: An Unauthorised Biography.
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3. As I write he is Emeritus Professor of Economics at Cambridge, and a Life Fellow of King’s. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
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9 Getting Serious
1. In the USA the PhD degree is almost invariably preceded by a Masters, during which time intensive teaching continues.
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2. John Dewey had been concerned that young geologists were relying on instruments and theoretical modelling rather than field observations. He established a medal at the Geological Society of London to recognise outstanding achievements in field-based work.
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3. What was revealed was the arrangement of tiny tubes in which the original plankton-feeding animals were housed. Since the animals (zooids) themselves were entirely soft-bodied they are never seen as fossils. Isolated graptolites also include their small growth stages, providing unparalleled clues to the development of colonies from one founding individual.
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4. A camera lucida is an optical device on a microscope that allows the viewer to see the object under examination and pencil and paper simultaneously, helping accurate drawings to be made.
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5. Referees, and many editors, are unpaid. The online era has spawned a mass of predatory journals that ignore peer review. They will publish almost anything – for a fee.
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6. For some years the professors in geology and ‘min and pet’ were at daggers drawn, and the door connecting the two departments was locked.
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7. I explained many of these fascinating interactions between trilobites and plate tectonics in my 2000 book Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution. I was soon competing with other palaeontologists pursuing similar ideas: science always moves fast when there is a change in world view.
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8. Holtedahl must have been eighty-five at the time. He was a greatly respected figure, who was awarded the highest honour of the Geological Society of London, the Wollaston Medal.
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10 The Life Scientific
1. The precision of these times might seem to belie my claims about my memory, but they are entirely thanks to David Bruton’s disciplined diary entries, for which I am truly grateful.
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2. That is not to say, of course, that the best scientist is the one who makes the most errors: that would be ridiculous!
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3. Fortunately, there was, but that is not a part of this book.
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Acknowledgements
Arabella Pike, my long-term editor at HarperCollins, suggested that I write this memoir of my early years. Without her generous invitation this book would have remained unwritten. As so often, Heather Godwin read and improved my first version; if a few feeble jokes fell to her perceptive axe it was in a just cause. My wife Jackie once again tolerated the selective amnesia of the writer at work. My gratitude to all three is beyond measure.
For details of my story I tested the memory of my sister, Kath, and now I can apologise for what she endured at the hands of her older brother. My old geological friend David Bruton kept diaries when I failed to do so, and generously allowed me to quote from his record of our adventures in Spitsbergen. My father’s early years were elusive, but I discovered what an outstanding sportsman he was by contacting Worcester Royal Grammar School; the school secretary Joanna Weaver provided much evidence of his prowess as recorded in old numbers of the school magazine. This was most helpful. My father’s fishing achievements were equally remarkable, and I must record my gratitude to Peter Hadwin of the Watford Piscators for looking into records from the River Gade. It seems my father’s trout record may still stand. My old school, Ealing Grammar School for Boys, no longer exists, but the old Ealonians do, for which I am thankful. I reproduce herein a sketch of Forge Cottage drawn by one of my school contemporaries, and I wish I could be precise about its attribution. Two of my schoolmasters – John Railton and K. E. Williams – have earned my thanks for significantly shaping my life. Both of them are no longer alive, but that does not diminish the gratitude they deserve. Friends from my schooldays, Bob Bunker and Robert Gibbs, have recalled the curious world of the grammar school, and stimulated my own recollections. From my university days, Victor Gray and Michael Welland prompted memories of my time as a young dog, and I am saddened that Michael died before he was able to read my stories. Clive Wilmer helped revive my young poetical self.
Rob Francis provided the photographs for this book, and I am indebted to his skill as a photographer. Jackie Fortey and David Milner trawled the manuscript for the errors that passed unnoticed by the writer. I never kept diaries, so despite my best efforts there will be errors in my account of distant decades. I admit full responsibility for any such shortcomings.
About the Author
Richard Fortey spent his working life in palaeontology at the Natural History Museum, specialising in trilobites and becoming a world expert. He was elected President of the Geological Society of London for its bicentennial year of 2007 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Literature. He has received the Frink Medal, the Michael Faraday Prize and the Lewis Thomas Prize for science writing, as well as the silver medal of the Zoological Society for science communication. He is the writer of eight previous science and nature books, including two Sunday Times bestsellers, all of which are still in print. He has presented many television programmes across the BBC and other channels.
Also by Richard Fortey
The Hidden Landscape: A Journey into the Geological Past
Life: An Unauthorised Biography. A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth
Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution
Fossils: The Key to the Past
The Earth: An Intimate History
Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum
Survivors: The Animals and Plants that Time Has Left Behind
The Wood for the Trees: The Long View of Nature from a Small Wood
About the Publisher
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A Curious Boy Page 28
