With thanks to netgalley and the author

Sadly I didn't download this title in time.

So can't really give a review

Jeremy Mallinson has clearly lived an interesting life and been at the forefront of wildlife conservation efforts. This book offered an interesting perspective of how zoos made the shift from entertainment to facilities for education and conservation.

What I loved most were the anecdotes from the author’s travels and his interactions with the animals. He has a wonderful sense of humor. I would have enjoyed more stories about the animals and less about the various councils and committees and whatnot. I also would have preferred fewer mentions of different people and more detail about the author’s interactions with the most significant individuals.

I appreciate that Mr. Mallinson was trying to summarize a great deal of history and give credit to the many people involved in various conservation efforts, but I thought much of that discussion dragged. There are too many people and too many acronyms to keep track of if you’re not already very familiar with the organizations discussed. I think my eyes crossed when I read sentences like this:

“The IRMC for the GLT was chaired by Devra Kleiman; the one for BLT was co-chaired by Faiҫal Simon (São Paulo Zee) and Devra Kleiman; and in addition to my co-chairmanship with Adelman Coimbra Filho of the IRMC for the GHLT, I was requested to co-chair the committee for the BHLT species with Admiral Ibsen de Gusmão Câmara (President, Brazilian Foundation for the Conservation of Nature – FBCN).”

The book includes many historical photos and a fairly extensive bibliography.

If you are interested in the history of wildlife conservation and you don’t mind reading that can be slow-paced, you may enjoy this book. I would consider this about 3.5 stars out of 5.

Thanks to The Book Guild for providing me with an ARC through NetGalley that I volunteered to review.

A quite lovely book that details his life caring for animals over the course of his career. It has wonderful photos, great details on animals and was outstanding example of his voice for conservation of species. I highly recommend this book for all who love animals . .I will be buying hard copies for gifts and for myself. Beautifully done its exquisite .

A touch of Durrell. A warm interesting real life tale with very interesting characters and real life pictures that were quirky,interesting and very different. It was good, and if you ever get a chance to see, the TV show" The Durrells in Corfu", you'll enjoy and understand a little more. so when you get a chance pick up a copy and enjoy.

The author was a young lad during WW2 and in the spirit of the times, headed out to be a soldier in then (peaceful) Rhodesia after finishing with public school. Many of the people he describes in his memoir were also public school types and well off; but we have to remember that in those times few other people could travel. The difficulty was to stop them shooting everything. So the author's first admiration for Africa and wildlife made him well suited for a career as zoo keeper and animal collector. However he came to this roundabout by a year as dairy man on an English farm, to get training in case he wanted to run his own farm; then working in a dog kennels.

Gerald Durrell by this time had set up his own private collection with his first wife Jacquie, in Jersey, and Jeremy got the chance to join as temporary keeper, first of all with birds, then moving to mammals, and apes. Jeremy wanted to make his own expedition and some of the nicest tales are of his trips to Africa and South America. From the start we are told that animals, especially the small ones, were being killed and habitat removed at an alarming rate, and Durrell considered the only way some of these would survive was by captive breeding. At the time many zoos were just displaying animals without making much effort to preserve the species; I am pleased to see that Dublin Zoo was in the forefront of applying itself to remedy this circumstance, and we learn how over a period, the major zoos of the British Isles agreed to work together to make suitable breeding populations and studbooks available, especially for great apes.

The names cited and faces photographed are often famous, such as HRH Princess Anne, Duke of Edinburgh, Noel Coward, John Cleese (Fierce Creatures was filmed at Jersey) but also names from the naturalist world; Tony Soper, Peter Scott, Dian Fossey, Johnny Morris, David Attenborough, many more. And of course we get photos of the Durrells and many animals. The photos only half showed in my e-reader programme on my PC. A physical book is the best guarantee of seeing them but they might be fine on a Kindle.

I enjoyed the often exciting memoir, in which the author seems careful to be tactful; he presents his studies of the extinction, near extinctions and desperate preservation attempts for many creatures, from the quagga and passenger pigeon to Pere David's deer, the European bison, lion tamarins and a mini Indian bush pig. Anyone keen to support conservation and to learn about the growth of the naturalist movement will want to read this book. Always nice to have another look at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.

Index and notes P223 - 232. I counted 5 names which I could be sure were female.
I downloaded an e-ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the chance to read this book!

At first I was a little confused; this book first came out in 2009 but the edition offered on Netgalley and recently published is actually an updated version of that work. When I was a teenager I devoured Gerald Durrell books; they were one of the few books I could find in what I know think of as 'animal memoir' books. There were others, but his books stood out as both funny and entertaining. Jeremy in his book tells of his own life, and how it was shaped by his work with Jersey zoo and Gerry. He also adds in a section where others are shown to have been influenced/been friends with Gerry too, but admittedly this was the worst part of the book for me; I was lost in titles and meetings and much preferred the more autobiography aspects of this book.

I had the kindle edition which unfortunately only shows black and white photos, but I imagine they would look beautiful in color in the new paperback. If you've read Gerald Durrell's books, then I must recommend this one as well to give an added perspective. Four stars.

This book is absolutely magical. I loved getting to see all the animal interactions and to read about the Durrell park. It is now on my must see list. Jeremy is fascinating and I would love to meet him.

Gerald Durrell has been one of my heroes since the early 1970's. With this delightful memoir, Jeremy Mallinson joins him. I loved his writing, his stories, and the obvious love he has for animals, for the Jersey zoo, where he spent his career, and for Durrell.

I always loved Gerald Durrell and was really excited when I got this book.
It did met all my expectations: it's full of facts and it's very well written.
I loved the photos and the style of writing.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC