David Bellamy is a natural story teller whose memoir is packed full of funny anecdotes and observations. He depicts wonderfully a childhood of discovery and adventure growing up in Carshalton during the second world war.

Despite rationing and evacuation, these were happy days of tremendous freedom spent roaming the wonderland of the surrounding countryside searching for bugs, beetles and bits of old shrapnel which young Bellamy and his brother would smuggle home to their father's shed for their firework-making sessions. His growing love of nature is interwoven with loving, often hilarious, portraits of the various characters he meets along the way.

From his days as a student in fifties London to his trial by fire lectureship at Durham University with a young wife and ever-growing family to support, Bellamy reveals his many great loves from sports cars to ballet. He also writes of his more serious concerns, with his reputation for being outspoken and undeterred in the face of big enterprises and corporations revealed in his battles and campaigns.