Patrick Barkham

The world depends upon plants and we treat them with so little thought and so little care and exterminate them without little thought or care and we will pay the price.

I mean, we have a responsibility.

And if there's only a fragment of hope left, you have a responsibility to do something about it.

Well, I guess the impression I come away with is just of his amazing intelligence.

I spent a good couple of hours with him at his home a few years ago now.

his mind is way quicker than mine still.

And he's now obviously turning 100.

And he's a brilliant storyteller, a great raconteur, and someone who's just endlessly curious about the world.

You know, it was very much like interviewing another journalist in that he ends up asking me lots of questions.

And I'm like, hang on, I've got nothing of interest to say to you, you know, but...

there he was, curious about the world and what I knew about it.

So David grew up in a family of teachers on the edge of Leicester and it was in that era where small boys and girls roamed the countryside and that's what David did and he kept tanks of tropical fish at home and he cycled for miles and miles in search of fossils.

My favourite place was...

was a woodland in the middle of England.

And it had rocks around it, which are full of fossils.

And sometimes you could hit a rock.

Sometimes they were sitting out there and you just turned over the rock and there it was.

And it was, you were the first person ever to see that.

And it hasn't seen the sun for maybe 150 million years.

And so he grew up with just that natural sort of casual intimacy with the wild nature of Britain in that era, which, of course, was much more plentiful than it is today.