Remember that the animals and plants have no M.P. they can write to; they can't perform sit-down strikes or, indeed, strikes of any sort; they have nobody to speak for them except us, the human beings who share the world with them but do not own it.

There is no first world and third world. There is only one world, for all of us to live and delight in.

Gradually the magic of the island [Corfu] settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen.

The great ecosystems are like complex tapestries - a million complicated threads, interwoven, make up the whole picture. Nature can cope with small rents in the fabric; it can even, after a time, cope with major disasters like floods, fires, and earthquakes. What nature cannot cope with is the steady undermining of its fabric by the activities of man.

As I watched the pulsing fire among the trees and heard the beat of the drum merge and tremble with the voices, forming an intricate pattern of sound, I knew that someday I would have to return or be haunted forever by the beauty and mystery that is Africa.

I said I 'liked' being half-educated; you were so much more 'surprised' at everything when you were ignorant.

My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood.