ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG NATURALIST

(Two Roads £8.99) IN 1953, David Attenborough was a ‘26-year-old novice television producer with an unused zoology degree, anxious to make animal programmes’.

Somehow, he persuaded the BBC and London Zoo to mount a joint animal collecting expedition and, with his cameraman, set off for a series of destinations, each more exotic and perilous than the last.

He recalls expeditions to Guyana, Indonesia and Paraguay in pursuit of rare creatures, including the laborious capture of a three-toed sloth, and a struggle to overpower an enormous manatee, a marine mammal that allegedly gave rise to the sailors’ myth of mermaids.

First published in the Fifties, this gently humorous account of exploring a world not yet invaded by mass tourism is a reminder of the beauty and strangeness of the planet we share with myriad extraordinary creatures.