As I wrote a while ago, the lockdown has been an opportunity to do lots of filing. And as part of that, I have been reading some of my journalism from the 1970s and 1980s; I was fairly prolific, writing columns in New Scientist, and also for a short-lived magazine entitled the Vole. I wonder how many readers of this column will remember Vole? I loved it. It was a serious conservation magazine, but also slightly scurrilous. Its founder and editor was the late Richard Boston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Boston . A man who grew Marijuana next to his front door, on the grounds that no one would notice it, it was so obvious. He was right. He was also one of the founders of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), and a columnist on the Grauniad. I never ever saw Richard drink anything except red wine and whisky, but he is certainly one of the saviours of British real ale! But Vole was great fun, and also at a time when I was the Executive Secretary of the very traditional, Fauna and Flora Preservation Society (a part-time role, with a salary which would now be below the minimum wage). Boston was a fully paid up member of the Anarchist party (sic!), and allowed me free reign in my writing. One of my favourite pieces, I found while filing, was a longer piece than usual, where ‘Burton takes a potshot at royalty, and others’. It’s about an article I wrote for the European union on changing attitudes to wildlife and here II can do no better than quote verbatim: “In 1977 I was asked to write an article for Naturopa, the journal for the Council of Europe. In the article I tried to highlight some of the threats to wildlife and also to indicate how narrow sighted our attitudes to it are. Surprisingly, one example I cited was edited out on the grounds that it showed one particular European country in a bad light and appeared to be an attack on the British monarchy. I confess I am a republican, but in this particular case I was merely demonstrating changing attitudes.”
It concerned something I had come across in the April 1936 issue of the Natural History Magazine a journal published quarterly between 1927 and 1936 by the British Museum. A long obituary of H M King George V, who as Prince of Wales had once been a Trustee of the Museum, records that during the Royal Visit to India in 1911: “he immediately commenced operations )on 18 December) and two tigers fell to his gun on that day, and with the exception of Sunday, the King shot every day until the 28th December….. King George’s suite accounting for no fewer than sixty-two specimens of big game, including some thirty-nine tigers. One day in the Chitawan Valley the Royal Party shot seven full-grown tigers, and of these King George killed five”. A century later, and I think both King George VI and the Duke of Edinburgh, shot tigers, en passant, it is a moot point as to how much attitudes have changed. In fact it was reading that Prince Harry, had sold all his guns, made me think about wring this. So perhaps the royal family will turn all their estates into nature reserves and ban all hunting. One hopes they have already banned lead shot — anyone know?
John Andrew Burton 