A voice in the wilderness - Phil Drabble

The autobiography of the journalist and broadcaster regularly seen on television in "One Man and his Dog". The life of Phil Drabble falls into three distinct periods of a quarter of a century all dominated by a love of wildlife and the countryside.;His childhood was spent among the industrial dereliction of the Black Country of Staffordshire, where he discovered newts and butterflies, birds and beetles.;Leaving university without qualifications, he took a job in a factory at 45/- a week and misspent his second quarter of a century in industry, escaping to quiet places with his wife Jess whenever he could and writing and broadcasting about them as a hobby.;At 47 he left industry to earn his living with his pen in an isolated cottage with 90 acres of misused woodland where he and Jess have spent the next 25 years creating a wildlife sanctuary which they hope will be the first link in a national chain of such reserves.;The last part of this book tells the "David and Goliath" struggle between the Drabbles and the developers who plan to build a "Leisure village" for 300,000 campers a year, adjacent to his reserve.