I often have to ask my students, What one person do you most admire and would you most like to be like. Of course, with some (you can usually tell by their goatee beards or the strange glint in their eyes) they will say the answer you can predict with depressing regularity. With others it is their father or brother (not, strangely, even for women, their mother or sister). For me the answer is clear. He is the author of the most influential book of my teenage years, the book that was far more important to me than the rather monotonous books I came to read much later by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, which merely confirmed what was already bleedingly obvious. Dr Desmond Morris was, and very much still is, incredible. The Naked Ape got me thinking like no other book. He planted a seed (strange metaphor, perhaps, for a zoologist) that has been growing ever since. Author, artist and broadcaster he is still as vibrant, fascinating and passionate an educator at 86 as he was half a century ago on Zoo Time on ITV. He is the one person I would most like to meet and who I hope will keep going for many, many years yet. desmond-morris/
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 15:26:02 +0000
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