The Nar Valley in Norfolk – A foot safari during the Covid lockdown.
John and Margaret Cooper’s Pentney to King’s Lynn ‘safari’ 13 – 15 July 2020. A report on our walk – and the natural history that we saw – for the…
Category: The Frightened Face of Nature
THE FISHES’ TALE. Part II : RESURGENCE
By Dr Valerie Jeffries FLS If you missed Part I, it’s here. Franz Witte back in Leiden could hardly believe what he was hearing on the crackly phone line from…
‘Over 1 in 10 UK species faces a real risk of extinction’
Written by Oliver Cottis. Spring is the best time of year and we are stuck at home. With such a depressing grind of negativity, I don’t think it’s ever been…
Tales from the Riverbank
By Helen Jeffries – FFON’s London Correspondent. Having unexpectedly got an extra day off on Easter Monday I set out in the freezing cold for a bracing walk along the…
If only we could race for space for nature
Maxwell Knight mentions the space race in his unpublished manuscript The Frightened Face of Nature and here’s a poignant quote from the same document: Knight’s point was that man should explore;…
Maxwell Knight Symposium coverage in the IAT Bulletin
Thanks for the generous coverage of the MaxwellKnight Symposium in the IAT Bulletin.
John and Margaret Cooper would like to express their personal thanks to Simon King
“Our friend Simon King has been a constant source of encouragement and support in the recent investigations into the life and work of Maxwell Knight (MK). Simon offered to take, temporarily…
“The mysterious Mr Knight: spymaster to be celebrated.” – Cage & Aviary Birds magazine July 18.
Thanks, Cage & Aviary Birds for the article “The Mysterious Mr Knight: spymaster to be celebrated” in this week’s publication. Registration for the Maxwell Knight Symposium is via The British…
Green Brexit: Farm subsidies ‘must be earned’ – Michael Gove
Michael Gove, as environment secretary, has made Greenpeace UK’s day by saying that farming subsidies must be earned and benefit the environment. Looking for a ‘green Brexit,’ Michael Gove may…
Should urban developers be forced to contribute to nature’s recovery in the UK?
By Simon H King With one in seven of the UK’s wildlife species at risk of *extinction should property developers be encouraged (or forced) to contribute to nature’s recovery? (*State…
‘More than 800,000 songbirds illegally killed’ on British military base in Cyprus – Robins and blackcaps are among the birds being trapped for food…
See The Independent online – The Express – The Guardian – BBC News
“Is there to be no room for the Arts?”
“This is the age of science”, is the cry from ministries and other authorities, and it is true that science must play a large part in the lives of our…
The beginning of something great? “Young people urge UK politicians to help safeguard nature”
“Young people” hit the headlines this week for all the right reasons – to share their 2050 vision for nature (#VisionforNature). Let us applaud these nature-protecting protagonists for making themselves…
Chapter IV – goodbye to wildlife?
In this heartfelt chapter of The Frightened Face of Nature, Maxwell Knight drops his guard and invites the reader to consider the unthinkable – “the virtual disappearance of nature”. “Does such…
As long as there are two songbirds still singing, the percentage decline can’t get any worse
In just forty years between 1970 and 2010 the global Living Planet Index (LPI), which measures more than “10,000 representative populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, has declined…
Maxwell Knight sang praises of the amateur naturalist
Maxwell Knight played a significant part in a number of fields; herpetology was his particular love and he produced a number of scientific papers on this subject as well as adding to…
Nature: friend or foe?
“Many people think that animals of all kinds can be neatly put into groups and labelled Friend, or Foe; or Harmless, or Harmful. Unfortunately, nature does not work like this,…
Why didn’t Maxwell Knight publish The Frightened Face of Nature?
Maxwell Knight was aware of the furore and criticism from chemical companies and others when Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring in 1962. Indeed, he credits her work in…
M’s (Maxwell Knight) Spectre: The Frightened Face of Nature
During the 1960s Maxwell Knight – the real-life “M” – was working on a manuscript entitled The Frightened Face of Nature, snatching brief moments to record his thoughts on how man had treated nature so unfairly for the first fifty years of the twentieth century. The manuscript documented Knight’s greatest fears that, time was running out for nature and that its greatest threat was man’s destructive revolution and the reverse of evolution.
“By all means let man use his great powers to invent new devices; let him give of his best to see that all shall benefit from his genius in curing, healing, and housing those in want. But do not suggest that this can only be done by destroying what is fine to look at or listen to, whether in the arts or nature.
If human brains can find means of defying space, improving means of communication and bouncing pictures off satellites, surely he can also discover ways in which these things can be done without destruction – for destruction first is the cry of mad revolution and is the reverse of evolution.”
– Maxwell Knight
The manuscript was kept under lock and key and it remained a secret until 2015 when the (hitherto unpublished) manuscript was discovered inside M’s personal filing cabinet…
Copyright: see acknowledgements
