I’m not very familiar with Richard Fortey, not having read any of his previous books nor, as best as I can recall, seen him on TV. So I came to read his book of memoirs uncluttered by preconceptions.

This book is about Fortey’s childhood through to young adulthood and about the role of natural history in his development as a palaeontologist. It touches on fishing, egg-collecting, fossils and very much more. Fortey is a dozen years older than I am and so it took me back beyond my youth although there is overlap. We hear about Fortey’s schooling and family life but only as background to the wildlife and natural history aspects of his life. I liked it and its gentle pace – a pace recalling those of stretches of the chalk rivers he writes about in places.

Maybe, I would have liked a little more pace. Slightly shorter chapters, for me, could have made space for another chapter or two – I’d have liked that.

I like the cover.

This is a good read and may well cause me to go back and read some of Fortey’s other books – he seems like an interesting and knowledgable guy.

A Curious Boy: the making of a scientist by Richard Fortey is published by William Collins.

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