It is bitterly cold on the deck of the Allankay and the bosun, Luca Massari, is checking that none of us are wearing contact lenses before we descend into Antarctic waters. There is a risk, he warns, that lenses will freeze solid over the eyes. Massari himself is prepared for his surroundings. He is wearing thick goggles that make him look like an Olympic ski jumper. Massari is a burly, heavily tattooed veteran of the environmental organisation Sea Shepherd, which campaigns against exploitating the oceans. His deck team are preparing…
Tag: Birds
Few do magnificence quite like the mandarin duck | Mark Cocker
It’s funny to think that the 80 ducks present on this reservoir before me would have been unthinkable in my childhood. Even stranger is that we now get the birds on our garden pond. Yet all the known sites in the 1970s were in southern England and were often inflected towards landed privilege and material wealth. Windsor Great Park was one of their more prestigious addresses, but the other stronghold for the country’s entire population was at Virginia Water in Surrey (where the average house price today is £1.4m). Even the…
Enjoy the magic of university life | Brief letters
Simon Jenkins seems to have forgotten the purpose of higher education (As thousands more teenagers scramble for university places, I have to ask – why?, 14 August). It is not, primarily, for vocational study, nor is it something to rush through in two years. It is to provide a lifetime love of learning and to encourage different ways of thinking. The solution is not to “cut back”, as Jenkins suggests, but, if anything, to ensure that as many students as possible experience the magic of university life.Emeritus Professor Gad HeumanUniversity of Warwick…