GREY DAGGERS AND MINOTAURS IN GREENWICH PARK: MEMORIES OF A LONDON SCHOOLBOY NATURALIST IN THE 1940S

John Burton was Assistant Secretary of the BTO in the early 1950s and subsequently was in charge of the BBC’s wildlife sound library for nearly 30 years. Starting in 1940, when he was nine, he has kept a natural history diary recording everything he saw and this ‘autobiographical’ book is primarily summaries of this information from the start to the time he left school in 1948. Throughout this period he lived in the Greenwich area of SE London, visiting many of the parks and open spaces whenever he could, although later chapters also record notes from expeditions further afield to such as Kent and Lincolnshire.

His primary interests, as they still are, were birds and butterflies but there are notes of other natural history as well including the two moth species mentioned in the title. Needless to say many of the species, and the areas they were in, have reduced considerably and several are sadly no longer recorded at all. Overall this is a very readable, chatty and well-written account of a budding naturalist in a period of major social and historical change. It does not try or pretend to be an in-depth analysis though.

Book reviewed by Peter Lack