Semper Juvenis

📖 The Scoop

This is a personal and professional autobiography of one of the leading land resource scientists of the past 50 years. Twice he joined institutions at their onset, and left when they had become leaders in their fields: the pioneering Environmental Sciences School at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, and the International council for Research in Agroforestry, Nairobi.

His professional career began during the golden age of tropical soil survey, of which he was later to write a history. In 1958 he became a one-man Soil Survey of Malawi, completing an agro-ecological survey of much of the country in three years. Subsequently he worked with FAO in developing methods of land evaluation and land use planning.

At all stages he tried to forge links between university research and practical development planning. He devised methods to improve the utility of soil surveys by linking them to performance data such as crop yields. He contested the view that developing countries had large areas of 'spare land', cultivable but not yet cultivated. At the end of his career he argued that population policy should be an integral part of rural development planning. "Whether these efforts met with success" he writes, "is for others to judge."

The personal story begins in World War II years at a progressive school in Hertfordshire, followed by National Service in the REME, a Geography degree at Cambridge, and a PhD in Geomorphology at Sheffield. There are descriptions of Colonial life in Nyasaland (Malawi) and expatriate life in Kenya. In retirement, he and his wife Doreen, another Geographer, embarked on world-wide self-conducted travels.

Between the chapters there are interludes giving favourite books, music, operas, even T-shirts, together with the most exciting and most moving moments. There are genealogies of his father's family going back to 1533, and his mother's family, Lack. The title of the book is a joke family motto, "Always Young" in Latin.

The style is light-hearted, and features bizarre events.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography / Science & Technology (fancy, right?)