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A lovely collector’s copy.

Son of the Antarctic explorer Captain Scott, Peter Scott fulfilled his father’s dying wish that he should become “a strenuous man”. A championship-class skater and dinghy-racer as well as an accomplished painter, Scott’s abiding passion was for wildlife. He travelled the world hunting and painting rare birds, then gave up shooting to found the Wildfowl Trust and later co-founded the World Wildlife Fund. Behind Scott’s charm lay a complex character, driven by his father’s legend and by an unconventional and dominating mother. This is his biography.

Review: When David Attenborough writes the introduction to a biography and describes the subject as a hero in their eyes, then you should take this as fair warning that you’re about to learn about an extraordinary life. However, despite that momentous prebilling, I didn’t quite expect how extraordinary that life would turn out to be.

I am just old enough to remember the tail end of Peter Scott’s illustrious broadcasting career and knew about his bird-themed paintings and role in establishing the Wetland and Wildfowl Trust at Slimbridge. I didn’t realise until recently that he was the only child of Scott of the Antarctic and that his mother Kathleen was a celebrated sculptor.

Having read this book from cover to cover in a couple of sittings, I now realise that there was so much more to the man than that, and it seems remarkable that he managed to cram so much into a single lifetime.

Scott was clearly one of those individuals who excelled at everything he put his mind to. On the sporting front, his overachievement began with ice skating (where he was told that he had the makings of a world champion, if he had only focused his attentions) to yachting (where he was an Olympic medallist and Americas Cup participant), graduating to gliding as he got older (for which he predictably became British champion 1993 and finally the nascent sport of scuba diving.

On the academic front, he scraped the lowest degree possible at Cambridge because he spent his time painting and shooting prodigious numbers of wild fowl using the ancient technique of ‘puntgunning’, but ironically, the pursuits that detracted from his academic performance provided him with the skills on which he built his distinguished career in conservation. Although it seems almost unimaginable for a man who went on to be a titanic force in the early days of conservation, it was only in midlife that he gave up shooting.

Peter was raised in a gilded social circle, with J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, as his godfather. His mother’s impeccable society connections and distinguished client base meant that he grew up comfortable interacting with society’s elite (including royalty, whom he later deployed to great effect in fund raising), and his distinguished naval career during World War II honed his organisational skills.

He seems to have been blessed with a easy going and optimistic personality, that allowed him to charm and cajole people into giving their best in terms of time, effort and resources. His fortunate demeanour stood him in great stead when it came to fund raising for the nascent conservation organisations such as WWT, International Union for the Conservation of Nature, World Wildlife Fund, of which he was a founding member and leading light for decades right up until his death.

This biography is written by Elspeth Huxley, a distinguished novelist in her own right who also wrote a biography of Peter’s father Robert Falcon Scott. She writes beautifully, and strikes a pitch perfect balance between fact and personal detail. Perhaps because she also moved in similar social circles in colonial Kenya and the UK, she has an instinctive feel for the society in which Peter grew up and the influences that moulded him into the consummate networker and fundraiser that he became.

Although this book is old (first published in 1993), it has aged remarkably well, which is partly a tribute to Huxley’s timeless style of writing and the forward looking nature of Peter’s mission to embed environmental considerations into decision making processes.

An utterly inspiring book about an utterly inspiring man. If it’s possible to fall in love with someone on the basis of their biography, then I fell in love with Peter Scott this weekend.