For thirty-two years Simon Barnes was one of the finest sportswriters in Britain, chief sports writer of The Times, dispatched to seven summer Olympics and named sports columnist of the year in 2008. Alongside the football and the cricket he kept a second column running, about wildlife, and it gradually became the more important half of his working life.
He is the son of Edward Barnes, a co-creator of Blue Peter, read English at Bristol, started out on local papers and spent a spell writing in Hong Kong. He now lives in Norfolk, where much of his nature writing is set. His departure from The Times in 2014 followed a series of columns blaming illegal persecution on grouse moors for the near disappearance of the hen harrier in England, a stance he has never disowned.
His real subject is amateur attention: the idea that you need no expertise to love the living world, only the willingness to look properly. The Bad Birdwatcher books made that argument famous.
7 hours and 30 minutes
