Description
Book SynopsisKenneth Allsop was a writer, journalist and broadcaster who in the 1960s and early 70s became one of Britain's first television celebrities. Voted the 'fifth most handsome man in the world', he enjoyed the high life of fast cars, jazz and smart London parties, moving among the nation's glitterati from the arts, media and politics. But he was also an accomplished naturalist and a passionate conservationist who fought fiercely to hold back mounting threats to Britain's wildlife and landscapes. He played a key role in raising the public's concern for the environment long before the advent of the UK's now-powerful green movement. Keeping the Barbarians at Bay focuses on the last few years of Allsop's short life, when he escaped London to live in a seventeenth- century watermill in the secret, crumpled landscape of West Dorset. The book describes how the threat of oil and gas exploration in this protected area of outstanding natural beauty forced him to become an environmental activist, and how his grassroots campaigning led him to the BBC's first environmentalist TV series Down to Earth, and to a radical 'green' column in The Sunday Times. Not surprisingly, he made powerful enemies in government and big business, at a time when there were few other environmental champions to lend him support. Using his unpublished diaries and papers, Keeping the Barbarians at Bay reveals the inside story of Allsop's struggles on three fronts: with 'the barbarians'; with the constant physical pain from his amputated right leg; and with his despair at the huge environmental challenges facing the planet. In the end, they were battles he could not win, and in May 1973 he took his own life at the tragically early age of 53.
Trade Review'Well-researched and likeable paperback ... Reality is resurrected with extracts from Allsop's diary (which confirm the verdict of his Dorset neighbour John Fowles that he 'combined the poet's eye with the journalist's pen) and his heart-brekaing suicide note to his wife written at the end of May 1973.' --The Oldie
