Growing up in two neighbouring English villages, David Kavanagh developed a love for nature and wildlife that never left him. But his childhood observations of the natural world eventually gave way to journalism when he reported on all manner of human life, from the grimly tragic to the wickedly funny. Along the way, he negotiated his own thorny thickets of sex, violence, breakdown and break-ups plus three brushes with extremist groups, the last one being the least personal but almost the most devastating.