And I was very much of the opinion that we should create a specialist largely undercover, all weather, mostly small animal collection at London and focus attention for the large mammals on whip snow. ’cause at that time it was very easy to get to. Whip still is, it’s only… Read More
I think, well, there were two factors that were in play there. One, one was a, a very tight financial position. London had been losing, losing revenue for quite some time. There had been this relatively small injection, this 10 million pounds that I mentioned, but that was, felt that… Read More
And there was a lot of play in the, in the London Press. London Press can be pretty vicious. We think the American press can be, but in nothing compared, compared to Fleet Street and the London media. And of course, you know, oh, London’s zoo’s gonna close down. And… Read More
Well, I didn’t ask, actually. What happened was that Colin Rawlins, who had responsibility overall for the zoos and, and a lot of external activity that Zeiss l was, was involved in, really felt he was moving towards retirement and he felt that he really needed to pass the animal… Read More
Why was there resistance to it?… Read More
Why did you decide to move away from veterinary medicine to an assistant director position, and what kind of responsibilities did you have?… Read More
I mean, they weren’t, they were independent operations, but because, ’cause John and I had that had that sort of common interest, but then we ran, if you with something like Orx and, and Aax and so on, you want to build up numbers. So what we then did was… Read More
Well, it started really with, with the relationship with Marwell John John Knowles, who I, I know you, you’ll know the name that John died a few years ago, but he had begun Marvel Manor as a private collection, firstly of wild quid species. He had one time, I think… Read More
And John, who had the resources at the time, John, John ran a, a, a very major poultry, national poultry industry. And, and that’s where he made his money. But he had the resources at the time to start bringing in through quarantine because the, the problem is with the… Read More
When did that start and what prompted this kind of collegial change?… Read More
This is the London Zoo, was it with all zoos or just Marwell Zoo?… Read More
And also, if you think about it most, a lot, an awful lot of key zoological literature, and I’m talking about books mostly were written during the early years of those, of those scientific societies in London. So not only London Zoo, geographical society, the ones I’ve already, people like… Read More
Why Age of the, of the London Zoo?… Read More
We did involve, and of course they were quite active at that time, some European dealers. And we did also find animals in the, actually in the Middle East that we were able to, to get some from. But in the end, it landed up with a jumbo 7 4… Read More
I can’t imagine London Zoo has a major zoo library. Yeah, But there’re not many zoo libraries in the United States. Read More
And for some reason or other it had, it had sort of, maybe he had some other interest at the time, but came to us and said, or brother, his folks came to us and said, look, could you, could you have our zoo up and running in two months,… Read More
And so, goodness, that was why. But we said, yeah, we’ll see what we can do. So it landed up with organizing 800 animals. Now some of them were Liz little lizards and frogs and tiny little things. Some, some invertebrates right up to white rhinos. They already had two… Read More
And, and in one or two cases, Doha and Qatar was a particular example where we actually went through the whole process and then, and then in the end managed that zoo for about five years. And, and at that particular time we, I was also for a short period… Read More
Well, we had, we were lucky enough at London to have a very well staffed architectural department, which was there primarily for our own purposes. But because we had those skills on site, we were approached by, over, over the, over a period of years, approached by a number of… Read More
How did that happen and why London Zoo and then can you relate a specific instance of you having to literally build an entire zoo?… Read More