This book might be described as an analytical autobiography. It is intensely personal, presenting many details of the author''s life but woven around a discussion of the development of RSPB policy on conservation of birds where the author played a central role, and drawing lessons for policy from personal experience. Each chapter finishes with a summary of the main points made; not what one would normally expect in a personal history and making the book more like a text on conservation policy. In the author''s mind I think the book is both these and other things besides. It is simultaneously didactic and messianic - the final chapter is entitled 'What we need to do to win''. There is evidence that the work was originally intended to be a more conventional autobiography. Thus witness a chapter with the title 'Snippets'' containing stories and anecdotes that couldn''t be fitted in the main text. Samuel Becket had something similar in his novel Watt ; words and phrases thought of but not used.

In that case however they were included as an addendum. But to say that this book is idiosyncratic is in no way to condemn it. I couldn''t put it down. It is a damned good read packed with interesting information and insider insights into some of the classic conservation battles of the period. All students of conservation should read it. I would particularly recommend some of the case studies in chapter 13 (although not that on the Peatlands Campaign where I seem to recall RSPB wasn''t centrally involved) the chapter appropriately titled ' The raptor haters'' and his assessments in chapter 16 of the conservation industry. The author spent 25 years working for RSPB and remains deeply committed to it as the ideal model for a conservation NGO containing the optimum mix of advocacy, political pressure, direct action and scientific analysis. In his view all other conservation bodies fall short of the ideal.

The Wildlife Trusts have lost their way, placing too much emphasis on people and too little on wildlife (the reviewer is sympathetic on this one).Greenpeace and FOE have other concerns, certainly no less important than wildlife conservation but to a degree in conflict with them at least in terms of resource allocation. The nearest to the RSPB perfection are recent specialist bodies: Plantlife; Butterfly Conservation and Buglife; but these bodies are too small, lacking the membership and therefore the clout of RSPB and the last chapters speculate as to whether RSPB should extend its remit to take over their territory or otherwise help to strengthen them and how far it should become a multi-national extending the RSPB experience overseas. Undoubtedly RSPB is the largest and most successful wildlife NGO in Europe with a reach now extending outside of the continent. It is to be congratulated on its success and Mark Avery to be thanked for the pivotal role he has played in it. However it falls to the reviewer to pour a touch of cold water on the author''s enthusiasm. From its inception, and written into its charter, the RSPB has been restrained from attacking the interests of the landed gentry; most obviously preventing any challenge to the upper class obsession with killing animals and birds, categorised as hunting or vermin control. These constraints remain and Avery confesses to wanting to launch a campaign against grouse shooting but knowing that within RSPB he could not do so.

But the interests of the landed classes extend beyond the slaughter of innocent raptors, game-birds and Mustelids ; they are reflected in received understanding, or lack of it, of the economics of farming and forestry. While regarding the NFU as part of the enemy, Avery none-the-less subscribes to the hoary old lie that intensification with its resulting monocultures is the consequence of economic pressures facing farmers. It isn''t. It is the result of the reduction and distortion of risk brought about by agricultural support and protection. If this support were wholly withdrawn the farming community would perforce shift back to crop rotations, lower intensity of cultivation and mixed farming as a rational strategy to minimise financial risk. Ricardo demonstrated this in the nineteenth century; that in adversity agriculture would retreat on both the intensive and extensive margins. But you don''t have to be an historian of economic thought to understand it. It was explained to the conservation community in the late 1960s and in the 1970s and 80s I was explaining it to the RSPB.

I''m afraid that I failed; the message was well understood in what was then known as Conservation Planning but the constraints on the organisation meant that it was never acted on. The reasons are obvious. Agricultural support does not benefit tenant farmers who simply face rising rents and land prices; it enriches their landlords. But the principal social cost of our obsession with looking after farmers and wealthy landlords is the destruction of wildlife habitat and the decimation of birds and other taxa. Any realistic programme to reverse these trends has to start from there. The economics of forestry is subject to a similar fallacy and this one too has been repeatedly demonstrated. It is not economic to grow trees for commercial purposes in the UK - which is not to say that we should not maintain and manage semi-natural woodlands. Commercial forestry exists to supply tax concessions to the wealthy and increasingly to multi-national companies with a by-product of providing shelter for pheasant rearing.

What Mark Avery saw in the Flow Country where the trees would often not even properly grow is equally true in the lowlands. The starting and finishing point therefore of any forestry policy as with agricultural policy therefore is the interest of those who pay the piper. But despite the constraints facing RSPB it has come a long way and has done a lot at least to mitigate the environmental consequences of land-holding. Avery''s book explains and celebrates this progress The hope for Buglife and the other conservation bodies that Avery admires is that their power base is urban not rural. Let us hope it remains that way. Meanwhile I look forward to meeting him on the picket line on August 12th.