Challenges facing the planet
This was one of my (Simon) favourite talks from the Maxwell Knight Symposium and we’re very grateful to Paul Pearce-Kelly for allowing us to share his slides on the FFON…
For easy-going naturalists.
This was one of my (Simon) favourite talks from the Maxwell Knight Symposium and we’re very grateful to Paul Pearce-Kelly for allowing us to share his slides on the FFON…
There are a few subjects best left off the table at dinner parties – Brexit is one, Climate Change is another. Both have the propensity to split the room equally…
I’ve received an invite to the Royal Garden Party (May 15th) and can’t wait to step through those imposing gates and join Her Majesty for tea and cake in her…
Thanks for the generous coverage of the MaxwellKnight Symposium in the IAT Bulletin.
Latest news 28/6/2018: Birkbeck College (“School of Arts’ annex”) is now confirmed as the venue for the Maxwell Knight Symposium. Further details about the Maxwell Knight Symposium can be…
Jane Goodall calls Trump’s climate change agenda ‘immensely depressing’ Trump climate: Challenges loom after Obama policies scrapped BBC News–4 hours ago Opponents of President Donald Trump’s decision to scrap his…
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The manuscript was kept under lock and key and it remained a secret until 2015 when the (hitherto unpublished) manuscript was discovered inside M’s personal filing cabinet…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