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The Guardian: Spectre of destruction: the lost manuscript of the real-life ‘M’
“Breaking open a locked cabinet belonging to Maxwell Knight, naturalist and spy, yields not Top Secret documents but a passionate scientific plea…” – Read Simon King’s article in the Guardian to learn more about the cabinet’s contents and the real-life M’s unpublished manuscript, The Frightened Face of Nature (28 October, 2015). Copyright: see acknowledgements
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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…
What will you do now that you know?
The Frightened Face of Nature is a space for slowing down.
Maxwell Knight (1900–1968) is known in some circles for his work in intelligence (MI5), but that’s not really why his name appears here.
Long before ‘the environmental crisis’ became a headline, Knight noticed something many around him overlooked: nature was on the back foot.
It was his love of animals and the natural world, not his professional career, that made him pay attention.
Knight’s life, anchored in curiosity, observation, and attention to detail offers a way to think about how we see the world, and how easily we can stop seeing it at all.
The Frightened Face of Nature takes its name from an unpublished manuscript he wrote, which was found inside a secret cabinet.
Here, we explore stories and questions that don’t fit neatly into clickbait headlines — not because they aren’t urgent, but because they are complex and demand more than fleeting attention.
Knight’s perspective reminds us: Awareness isn’t passive. It’s an active choice.
So what will you do now that you know?
— Simon King FLS
