The autobiography of the journalist and broadcaster regularly seen on television in One Man and his Dog. The life of Phil Drabble falls into three distinct periods of a quarter of a century all dominated by a love of wildlife and the countryside. His childhood was spent among the industrial dereliction of the Black Country of Staffordshire, where he discovered newts and butterflies, birds and beetles. Leaving university without qualifications, he took a job in a factory at 45/- a week and misspent his second quarter of a century in industry, escaping to quiet places with his wife Jess whenever he could and writing and broadcasting about them as a hobby. At 47 he left industry to earn his living with his pen in an isolated cottage with 90 acres of misused woodland where he and Jess have spent the next 25 years creating a wildlife sanctuary which they hope will be the first link in a national chain of such reserves. The last part of this book tells the David and Goliath struggle between the Drabbles and the developers who plan to build a Leisure village for 300,000 campers a year, adjacent to his reserve.