I was very pleased to be asked to give a talk to the CIC, All Things Good and Nice.

James invited me, and Eve was kind enough to take my Maxwell Knight slides and put them in the right order so they could be shown on the evening, thank you both.

And thank you to everybody who took the time to attend and ask some great questions.

There was a lot to talk about, 68 years of Maxwell Knight’s life (in around 68 minutes) as one of Britain’s greatest spymasters during the inter-war years, but also a very keen amateur naturalist, a BBC natural history broadcaster, an author, and much more.

For those who couldn’t make it:

I walked the audience through my own journey, from when I first became involved with Maxwell Knight’s cabinet and began to look at what was inside, including one or two very interesting items we discussed on the night.

But the main thing I found was what became, in many ways, his final thoughts on nature, an unpublished manuscript entitled The Frightened Face of Nature, which is where this blog takes its name: https://thefrightenedfaceofnature.com

I explained how John Cooper and Margaret Cooper kindly allowed me to examine the cabinet, and how Knight was influenced by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

As a spymaster, he understood man’s inhumanity to man, but he also wrote about man’s inhumanity to nature.

Even though his manuscript was written in the mid-1960s, just before man landed on the moon, many of the things he wrote still resonate today.

He believed in science, and would have relied on it in his intelligence work, but he also questioned how we use it, and warned that if it becomes the reverse of evolution, then we have a problem.

To James, Eve, and their community, thank you, and please keep up the good work. And thanks to my son Ed for joining me.

It is communities like yours that make a real difference, not just to those around you, but to the young naturalists, the “nature detectives”, as Maxwell Knight would call them, who are coming through today.

We spoke about the importance of positive role models, and how their influence can last a lifetime.

Thank you again for inviting me, and for listening.