Over almost forty years, Richard Lewington has built up a reputation as one of Europe's finest wildlife illustrators. He first became interested in butterflies as a child when he inherited a cabinet of insects from his father. He studied graphic design at the Berkshire College of Art, and since leaving in 1971 has specialised in natural-history illustration. His meticulous paintings of insects and other wildlife are the mainstay of many of the modern classics of field-guide art, including Insects of Britain and Western Europe, Collins Butterfly Guide, Field Guide to Dragonflies of Britain and Europe, Field Guide to the Moths of Great Britain and Ireland, Pocket Guide to Butterflies of Britain and Ireland and Guide to Garden Wildlife. He was, for many years, the principal artist on the multi-volume series, The Moths and Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland. He has also designed and illustrated wildlife stamps for a number of countries, including a set of ten stamps of British butterflies for Royal Mail in 2013. Jeremy Thomas, one of Europe's most accomplished butterfly experts, is Professor of Ecology and a Fellow of New College at the University of Oxford, and the President of the Royal Entomological Society (2012-14). He previously worked as a research scientist at the Nature Conservancy's Monks Wood laboratory, at the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology's Furzebrook Research Station, and at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology's Dorset laboratory. He initially helped devise the methods used to monitor change in the distributions and abundance of butterflies, and for four decades has led research teams across Europe to study the ecology of threatened species, including the interactions between ants and butterflies. He has applied his research results widely to conserve declining European butterflies, including the five species of Large Blue. Thomas's work has attracted a variety of awards, including leading prizes for advancing the sciences of both Conservation Biology and Ecology, for natural-history writing and for practical conservation.
