Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life Of The Natural History Museum

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Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life Of The Natural History Museum

3.71 of 5 stars 3.71 · rating details · 508 ratings · 125 reviews

Richard Fortey -- one of the world’s most gifted natural scientists and acclaimed author of Life, Trilobite and Earth -- describes this splendid new book as a museum of the mind. But it is, as well, a perfect behind-the-scenes guide to a legendary place.

Within its pages, London’s Natural History Museum, a home of treasures -- plants from the voyage of Captain Cook, barnac...more

Hardcover, 338 pages

Published January 6th 2008 by Harper Press (first published 2008)

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Oct 05, 2011 Brittany rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, sciencewriting

This book is like Beauty and the Beast.

Let me explain.

Beauty and the Beast is my very favorite fairy tale. I will read adaptations of that story all day long, and well into the night. My favorite part of any version is when Beauty explores the castle. She's alone, and it's quiet, and she's wandering through room upon room of wonders and marvels. Beauty's sense of of awe, discovery, and curiosity perfectly mirrors Fortey's experience wandering through the hallways, storerooms, basements, and att...more This book is like Beauty and the Beast.

Let me explain.

Beauty and the Beast is my very favorite fairy tale. I will read adaptations of that story all day long, and well into the night. My favorite part of any version is when Beauty explores the castle. She's alone, and it's quiet, and she's wandering through room upon room of wonders and marvels. Beauty's sense of of awe, discovery, and curiosity perfectly mirrors Fortey's experience wandering through the hallways, storerooms, basements, and attic of London's Natural History Museum. It's as if Beauty gave up on that whole fall-in-love-and-find-a-prince scenario and took up curatorial and archival duties in the castle. It is wonderful.

Fortey spent years as a trilobite curator at the museum, so he is in prime position to recount the wonders housed there, the politics of the museum, and the changing trends of the establishment. He discusses how new technology, including genetic sequencing and tagging, have changed the way museum scientists do science. He talks about how changing funding structures pushed museums from being strictly research institutions to being centers of public learning. At times, he comes across as a bit of a curmudgeon, tut-tutting at those kids in the white coats with their gene sequencers, but in the end he recognizes their importance, though does stress the often-forgotten value in a specialist in one taxon or another. He does go on to explore the burgeoning role of the citizen scientist, but this is all information that will be familiar with anyone up on these branches of biology. He has some good things to say about the evolving roles of museum and science, but nothing earthshaking or very novel.

The wonderful value in this book, and what makes it such a treasure, are the treasures of the museum themselves. The twisting, hidden architecture of the museum, and the surprises it contains. These gems, set off by Fortey's engaging, amusing, and personable narration, make this an extremely pleasurable book.(less)

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May 15, 2010 Joyce added it · review of another edition

Shelves: librarybook

This hilarious memoir makes the case that British eccentrics, particularly of the scientific variety, are an endangered species due to rapid habitat loss. The author spent his entire career as the "trilobite man" at the Natural History Museum in London -- in the Department of Palaeontology, reachable by a door hidden behind a skeleton of a giant sloth in the public gallery, of course -- and he is a gleeful guide to everything that will be lost in a world where research and particularly taxonomy...more This hilarious memoir makes the case that British eccentrics, particularly of the scientific variety, are an endangered species due to rapid habitat loss. The author spent his entire career as the "trilobite man" at the Natural History Museum in London -- in the Department of Palaeontology, reachable by a door hidden behind a skeleton of a giant sloth in the public gallery, of course -- and he is a gleeful guide to everything that will be lost in a world where research and particularly taxonomy are no longer considered sexy commodities.

Speaking of which, Fortey is surprisingly open about the love lives, mental disorders, and substance abuse problems of his colleagues -- the title refers to a noted trysting spot in the Museum -- and even seems rather disappointed by the notoriously clean-living minerologists. But in my opinion his best anecdotes are the ones directly related to research: how Linneaus's notebooks almost touched off a war, why mycologists tend to be watercolorists, numerous examples of scientists coming to resemble their objects of study (touchingly, the mollusc people work in a cozy "oyster bed" in the basement), stories of demi-official collecting expeditions like the one organized in the early 1970's by 4 young entomologists (who all looked like members of Fleetwood Mac) for £3,000.

Fortey employs a charmingly old-fashioned turn of phrase, sometimes to a baffling extent, as when he refers to fossil shells "shaped like the wafers that hold scoops of ice cream" (uh... you mean ice cream CONES??). I particularly love it when he busts out with some dotty aside like "It has been one of my life's unfulfilled ambitions to eat the giant mushroom Termitomyces that grows deep inside the termite mounds in Africa"; or "they glide over the forest floor feeding on decaying vegetation: a slime mould in this stage of its life is like a patch of living snot". Boundless affection for nature's works -- especially animals, slightly less for plants and a rather stiff relationship with rocks -- is exuded from every chapter.

Lest you get the impression that this memoir is merely an academic gossipfest, let me note how deeply the author understands and makes the case for scientific research and particularly the unending minutiae of taxonomy. Even those of us who read a lot of popular science books are probably incapable of explaining so clearly the actual processes by which species are collected, prepared, described, named, verified, accepted, stored, and sometimes reclassified. Still less could we describe the pros and cons of the major taxonomic methods in play today. Fortey can and does, grounding his anecdotes in the day-to-day work of the palaeontologist, zoologist, and botanist.

The scientific method is not a pretty thing practiced by angelic gentlemen in this author's view -- at one point he notes, "It might actually be the case that having an obstructive, disagreeable, temperamental, competitive or even downright anarchic group of people all scrapping and competing is the best way to push knowledge forwards." -- but his lively account gives you a sense of what the world will lose when market-driven, value-added, customer-focused museums entirely take over the natural homes of those few obsessives who can recognize thousands of midges, butterflies, fungi, or trilobites as easily as most people can recognize the faces on Facebook.(less)

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Dec 01, 2008 Melody rated it 3 of 5 stars

Wildly discursive, endlessly fascinating look behind the scenes of the Natural History museum in London. Fortey is a scientist's scientist, a naturalist's naturalist- he's compelled to explain some mind-numbing minutia along the way to imparting interesting facts. Some of his pedantic asides made me laugh out loud because they were such textbook nerd moments. There's a lot of detail here, more even than I wanted, but the narrative is terribly interesting. If you like that sort of thing, and I do...more

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Jan 24, 2009 Carrie rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a delightfully enthusiastic book, most interesting for anyone who has ever visited the museum in question (and anyone who hasn't). It includes some fascinating pictures. And the design of the book is pleasing. The author has a wonderfully intimate manner, and paints almost Dickensian-ly vivid pictures of his colleagues, past and present. Consequently, the book has a convivial, chatty feel. Delightful.

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Dec 28, 2008 Jess rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: because-it-sounds-cool, social-histories, philosophical, history, that-contribute-to-my-understanding

Each chapter of this book reminds me of an incredibly detailed article in National Geographic. You can tell that each tidbit that Fortney shares is both an epitome of a departmental science and a piece of regular juicy office gossip. That’s probably why I was riveted.

I kept setting the book aside to look up whatever it is that he had just mentioned, like what a Bettong is or to see what the Diplodocus looks like at the British Museum.

I'm learning tons of new words. So far I've had to look up: n...more

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Jul 31, 2009 Kelly Belvis rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It took me many months to read this book which might make it seem that I didn't enjoy it. However, that's not the case. I especially loved the early chapters in this book which give you a walk through, behind-the-scenes look at London's Natural History Museum. It took me so long to finish it because I lack the discipline to push through non-fiction. Stories propel me forward and compel me to keep reading...even good non-fiction just doesn't do that for me.

This book includes scientific informati...more

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Jul 29, 2009 Wendell rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I suppose it’s inevitable to compare Dry Storeroom to Douglas Preston’s Dinosaurs in the Attic, though Fortey doesn’t come out ahead in the competition. On the other hand, his Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth was such a fine book that Dry Storeroom had every reason to be just as engaging. It isn’t, though, and I’m still not entirely sure why. I suspect it’s because Fortey focuses almost exclusively on the scientists who work “behind the scenes” in his muse...more I suppose it’s inevitable to compare Dry Storeroom to Douglas Preston’s Dinosaurs in the Attic, though Fortey doesn’t come out ahead in the competition. On the other hand, his Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth was such a fine book that Dry Storeroom had every reason to be just as engaging. It isn’t, though, and I’m still not entirely sure why. I suspect it’s because Fortey focuses almost exclusively on the scientists who work “behind the scenes” in his museum (or who “worked” there—quite a few of them are dead), and the recounting of old gossip and long-forgotten eccentricities and peccadilloes isn’t nearly as intriguing as Fortey perhaps intended it to be. Throughout, I wanted to hear more about the science itself, about the specimens, about (for crying out loud) trilobites, which are Fortey’s area of specialty. Though he does a decent job of explaining the basics of taxonomy and nomenclature, including a discussion of the conceptual upheaval of the entire endeavor that has been occasioned by our modern capacity to trace species relationships through DNA analysis, all of it feels a tad superficial. Fortey mentions the fact that modern science has challenged the very concept of “species,” but doesn’t ever quite arrive at the point. Other than alluding to the classic “lumpers vs. splitters” feud, meanwhile, he doesn’t speak much about what all of this means for paleontologists, who are forced to erect and defend species on the basis of entirely external characteristics (given that DNA is unavailable). In light of Fortey’s interesting discussion of the complete revolution that took place in the understanding of the taxonomy of just one species of common marine snail, Littorina, following genetic analysis, or the fact that some workers claim that as few as 40% of living species of Conus are valid, one wonders what hope there might be (to take one example) for fossil Conus, a morass if ever there was one—and that’s just a single gastropod in a single (admittedly huge) phylum. I assume that Fortey and his publisher made their editorial decisions deliberately to avoid overwhelming the scientifically handicapped, but I couldn’t help but feel that the dumbing-down sometimes went too far. Fortey takes several occasions to comment on the virtual extinction of the grand scientific enterprises that gave birth to our understanding of the systematics of living things, but he’s more wistful than angry about the way changing funding priorities and budget-slashing at universities and museums have made a victim of science. Anger, indeed, would be justified. Overall, Dry Storeroom is too long on anecdote and too short on analysis of the hard issues, and “popular” begins to bleed over into the territory of the run-of-the-mill. It’s a privilege to read Fortey; it’s just that I suspect he has much more compelling things to say.(less)

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Jul 28, 2011 Derek Baldwin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Richard Fortey is an authority on trilobites and was a long-time employee at London's Natural History Museum. Despite many years worked there, there were many nooks and crannies behind-the-scenes that he seldom if ever visited and many specimens (in fact the vast majority) that the public never see. These are held in backstage areas such as Dry Store Room No. 1. This book is a very personal and partial look behind the scenes of the museum, its workers, and the whole field of natural history. I f...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it · review of another edition

"The Natural History Museum is, first and foremost, a celebration of what time has done to life," writes Fortey, whose engaging book similarly commemorates the vast record of life on Earth. As he meanders through the halls of the museum's back rooms, Fortey proves to be an excellent, witty guide to the scientists and specimens that give testament to this history. Far from being a dry read, Dry Storeroom No. 1 weaves together colorful anecdotes about the scientists, their research, and the value

...more

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Apr 05, 2009 Alex rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed

Interesting. I went into this thinking it would be much like "Peaceable Kingdom", which chronicled a year in the life of the Philadelphia zoo, and which was very much a social history of the zoo itself; lots of stories about the people who worked there, the animals, other zoos. Backstage stuff on the Natural History Museum (in England, not the US, which is something else I failed to notice when I picked it up. This fact obviously doesn't affect how I might think of the book, but it was still sor...more

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Mar 25, 2011 Strey rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Okay, peeling the negative away first... From the cover design & description I thought this was going to be easier on the brain!! I was interested in the history & practical 'behind the scenes' story of the Natural History Museum, but felt I didn't get this. I was also bemused by the, at times very involved (for a layman) technical minutae, interspered with discursive recollections & often extremely comic interludes. At other times I was left quite disturbed, or saddened by some of t...more

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Mar 16, 2012 Doc Kinne rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fortey is not only a reasonable writer in that he can tell a good story, he also has some important things to say gleaned from his whole career and the British Natural History Museum. He uses this book to say those things, but doesn't quite fall into the preachy area.

While Fortey's line of work is arthropod paleontology, he roams and roves through the Museum as a whole, including plants, minerals, and fungi. Much of the book is telling about his co-workers over the years, and he includes the gre...more

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Apr 03, 2012 Pam Lindholm-levy rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Collector types, science junkies

I was enthralled by this book. The writer was a curator at the Natural History Museum in London for many years.This is probably not a book for everyone, but as someone who loves (and believes in) science, I couldn't get enough. Fortey, with humor and love, takes the reader behind the scenes of this fabulous place and recounts the triumphs and downfalls of some of the characters who have worked there over the years. The collections the scientists amassed boggle the mind. Fortey brings us to the p...more

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May 13, 2013 William rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I found the book a little uneven. Parts of it where he described the museum and the various rooms and contents were very interesting, but the characters less so. Some funny incidents and eccentric characters but not consistently so. A little preachy in places. The dying out of the old way of doing things and the lack of funding for it will likely not be missed much 50 years from now. He did recognize the democratization and dispersion of natural history information via the internet as a big part...more

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Jun 18, 2009 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars

I may not have been in the mood to read this book; it was really very good. There was a ton of information that was new to me: lots of scientists working at the museum, how they preserve some of the things; the challenge of naming everything. The fact that he loves the museum and what he does there came through clearly and was pretty infectious. I had trouble getting my head around spending your whole life finding out everything there is to know about an obscure insect nobody has ever heard of....more

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Apr 28, 2013 Eddy Allen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arts-and-historical

Richard Fortey -- one of the world’s most gifted natural scientists and acclaimed author of Life, Trilobite and Earth -- describes this splendid new book as a museum of the mind. But it is, as well, a perfect behind-the-scenes guide to a legendary place.

Within its pages, London’s Natural History Museum, a home of treasures -- plants from the voyage of Captain Cook, barnacles to which Charles Darwin devoted years of study, hidden accursed jewels -- pulses with life and miraculous surprises. In an...more

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Jun 30, 2011 Kirsten rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: from-library, non-fiction

This is part memoir, part history of the British Natural History Museum, part paean to the glories of science, and part gossipy tell-all. The parts don't always mesh quite as well as I would like, but I still greatly enjoyed this book. I've really enjoyed a Fortey's works of natural history, and I think this book is at its best when he is gleefully geeking out about how taxonomy or exclaiming over a strange find in a cabinet in a dusty corner of the Museum. Less enjoyable are his stories of the...more

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Apr 29, 2013 Erin Price rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013, non-fiction, library

I wanted to like this book, and it had some interesting anecdotes, but in the end, it felt too much of the old boy clubs network. Too many character sketches mentioned tobacco use or alcohol as the defining characteristic, and Fortey's "personal museum" seems sadly to have focused entirely on its male exhibits. I'd assume that to be a failing of the environment rather than the author, but brief mentions indicate that many of his colleagues were women-they just didn't rate an in depth look at the...more

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Feb 20, 2013 Lindz rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 13x13, academia, history, nonfiction, museums, travel, natural-history, science, memoir

Ever wanted to know what goes on behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum of England? This is a rambling tour by a senior paleontologist at the museum, peering into the dark storerooms that the public rarely, if ever, sees. It's a pretty hefty book but it still feels incomplete, as there's no way he could cover everything that sounds interesting.

And ooh is it gossipy in some parts! I don't want to give it away - that'd be like telling a friend's story for them - but there are some juicy b...more

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Sep 14, 2012 Natasha rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, history, science

A disjointed and disappointing book that touches on a lot of science, a number of people who did that science, and not much about the actual museum itself.

I was quite excited to read this book since I had thought it would be about natural history museums. It turns out I didn't read the summary all the way, which seems to be happen more than I would like. I love museums and certainly need to go to more to them so I would have loved if this book was about the history of natural history museums. I...more

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May 22, 2010 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-nature, own

I really enjoyed this book, the balance of information and humour was perfect in keeping my full attention; with other non-fiction books they can become a chore to get through at times but Fortey's humour pushed it along nicely and I am definitely a fan of the way he writes. Once picked up it was hard to put down but also very easy to get back into when picked up again after a break.

Fortey takes us into the secretive world of the museum, to get to know the cogs of the machine, without which the...more

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Nov 13, 2010 Cindy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, science

Themes: natural history, conservation, research, weird science
Setting: The Natural History Museum in London, England

Ever read books where they talk about going up to the British Museum for the day? Well, the British Museum is now the Natural History Museum (and a few other spin-offs) and Fortey takes the reader behind the scenes for an insider's view on what really goes on in such a huge museum.

Fortey started his career as a biologist back when the museum was a slightly stuffier and more serious...more Themes: natural history, conservation, research, weird science
Setting: The Natural History Museum in London, England

Ever read books where they talk about going up to the British Museum for the day? Well, the British Museum is now the Natural History Museum (and a few other spin-offs) and Fortey takes the reader behind the scenes for an insider's view on what really goes on in such a huge museum.

Fortey started his career as a biologist back when the museum was a slightly stuffier and more serious place, and only retired a few years ago, by which time the museum had become more of an attraction and began updating exhibits to attract paying guests. But the focus remains on the science. However, his book isn't really just about the history of the museum, its contributions to English scientific understanding and so on, but rather his own experiences, acquaintances, his explorations of all the hidden little corners of the vast building, and the gossip about the many folks who work there.

And what juicy gossip there is! You wouldn't think that there would be much room for racy anecdotes among the dry and serious types who work at the museum, but wow, you would be so wrong. This and the Shakespeare book both convince me that gossip was much more interesting before it started revolving around which celebrity was sleeping with whom, which had an eating disorder, and who is feuding with whom.

For his format, he starts with the collections of the museum, from mammals and plants and insects (lots of great stories there) to minerals and then the nuts and bolts of how such a place is run and what it takes to keep it going. The book is full of quirky personalities, which makes it so much more fun to read. He does stick his own opinions in there about evolution and religion, about the need to preserve every single species no matter how obscure, about the damage human beings are doing to the planet, about his political views, but he keeps those parts fairly brief and gets on with the more interesting stories of people he has met and colorful characters from the museum's past. I really enjoyed one. Recommended.(less)

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Sep 22, 2008 Harry Rutherford rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, natural-history-biology-nature

Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum is about the behind-the-scenes work at the Natural History Museum in London. Whether you find that an appealing subject for a book depends, I suppose, on your feelings about museums and/or natural history; personally I found it irresistible.

The public face of the museum — animatronic dinosaurs and overexcited schoolchildren — gives relatively little sense of the scientific work that goes on behind the scenes, all of which is cen...more Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum is about the behind-the-scenes work at the Natural History Museum in London. Whether you find that an appealing subject for a book depends, I suppose, on your feelings about museums and/or natural history; personally I found it irresistible.

The public face of the museum — animatronic dinosaurs and overexcited schoolchildren — gives relatively little sense of the scientific work that goes on behind the scenes, all of which is centred on the museum's collection of biological specimens: pressed plants, trays of pinned beetles, drawers full of bird skins or fossils, jars of starfish in alcohol. The sheer scale of these collections is hard to comprehend: the museum holds over 70 million specimens. That means every person in the UK could be given one to take home and they'd still have enough left over for everyone in Sweden. 28 million of them are insects.

The collections haven't been accumulated simply through an excess of acquisitiveness, although there must be some connection between the satisfaction biologists get from collecting beetles and other people's collections of stamps, obscure soul 45s or golf memorabilia. The point of the collection is that it is a vast reference library: if you find an earwig in Burma and you're not sure whether it's a new species, you can start by checking the literature; but if all else fails, the last resort is to go to a museum, open up the drawers full of earwigs, and start peering at them through a microscope.

This kind of taxonomical work — preparing specimens, describing species, working out their relationships, publishing highly technical articles about it — might seem to be complete drudgery to an outsider; it is slow, careful, precise, unglamorous. But it obviously has a hold on people, because the book is full of people who spend decades working on some particular group of organisms, retire, and then keep coming in to the museum to continue their work in retirement. Fortey himself is apparently one of them, retired in 2006 but still working away at his trilobites.

The books combines a history of the museum, examples of the work done there, anecdotes about characters on the staff (not surprisingly, perhaps, there have been a few notable eccentrics) and a passionate defence of taxonomy as a valuable field of study. It's well-written, frequently entertaining, pitched at the interested amateur, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.(less)

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Oct 26, 2008 Steven rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, science, natural_history

Kind of read this on a whim, but I'm very glad I did. I spent a college semester in London back in the 80s, and although the Natural History Museum was less than a mile from where I lived, and I must have walked by it dozens of times, I never visited it. I have no idea why. Something to do with the priorities of youth, I suppose.

Fortey takes the reader on a anthropological, cultural and historical tour of the museum. He very cleverly does this managing to avoid laundry lists and a systematic dep...more

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Jul 31, 2010 Karen rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wow, this book is boring. I love books that give me a new perspective on something known, but wow, this is a painful book to read. And do we really need to know that some British palaeontologist 30 years ago loved to grope women? Just an odd assortment of any fact he happened to know thrown into one book. I give it two stars simply because not a lot of people in the world could have written this book (thank goodness!). Very unique perspective, even if it's the perspective of a very boring person...more

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Sep 11, 2012 Ben rated it 4 of 5 stars

A bit of a ramble, Fortey goes behind the scenes in London's Natural History Museum and introduces us to the inner workings of the institution, its collections of exhibits and of eccentric people -- but also freely indulges in digressions on the details of their work. He might be talking about reforms to the British Civil Service bureaucracy that governed the Museum one minute, and counting the hairs on a rare spider's legs the next. It's all good fun and its scattered absent-mindedness has that...more

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Oct 25, 2010 Amanda rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I just finished this book a few days ago and really enjoyed it. I didn't read parts of it very carefully (like the bit about geology), but it didn't take away from the whole message. It gave me a new appreciation for everyone working behind the scenes to make a museum work. It also beautifully comments on the changes to how science is portrayed and given to a public that only craves the new, exciting and tech-savvy. A fun book and a great natural history lesson!

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Sep 21, 2008 Ross rated it 2 of 5 stars

The subtitle of this book grabbed me. But maybe I should have paid more attention to the title itself. While it's true that Natural History museums have a significant secret life--a life beyond what is public and on display. It is a world of collecting, classifying, and analyzing the natural world. Indeed, the author spent his career at the British Museum studying trilobites. While his general enthusiasm for natural history certainly helps the book, his inability to carry a theme or, apparently,...more

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May 02, 2013 Loren rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: to-be-sold

I wanted this book to be like the backstage tour of the California Academy of Sciences. I wanted an understanding how how a natural history museum works, how exhibits are curated, how specimens are preserved and stored and used. That must be another book.

This is a memoir by the "trilobite" man at the Natural History Museum in London. I haven't yet visited that museum, but the book hasn't inspired me to go out of my way, unfortunately.

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Jan 19, 2009 Ted rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: england

Dry Storeroom No. 1 informally explains the work of the British Natural History Museum. It is based on the author's 30+ years career at the museum and on conversations with other employees. The mixing of technical explanations with anecdotal tales provides insight into how scientists work as well as what they technically accomplish.

The book is dry at the beginning but picks up after the first chapter. Perseverance will pay.

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About Richard Fortey

Richard Fortey is a senior paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was Collier Professor in the Public Understanding of Science and Technology at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Bristol in 2002. His books have been widely acclaimed: Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth (Knopf) was short...more

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Books by Richard Fortey

Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth

Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind

Survivors; the Animals and Plants that Time has Left Behind

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“I believe profoundly in the importance of museums; I would go as far as to say that you can judge a society by the quality of its museums. ” — 5 people liked it

“A life accumulates a collection: of people, work and perplexities. We are all our own curators. ” — 4 people liked it

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