Chris Packham

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TV presenter, photographer and conservationist Chris Packham is one of the nation’s favourite naturalists. He is best known for the BAFTA-winning The Really Wild Show and fronting Springwatch and Autumnwatch.

As a boy, his intense fascination with wildlife marked him out as ‘the weird kid’ and his childhood in Hampshire was spent as a solitary, silent observer of miraculous, miniature worlds populated by ants, bats, otters and snakes. But it was a single act that would change his life forever: taking a young kestrel from its nest. He would form an all-consuming friendship with this tiny fledgling and their remarkable bond would teach him what it meant to love.

This shimmering memoir weaves back and forth through time, gloriously capturing a child’s view of the 60s and 70s – the music, the clothes, the cars, the freedom – alongside recent, more exposing recollections from adulthood. Fingers in the Sparkle Jar is unexpected but it truly glitters.

‘A flickering vat of life itself. A brilliant and remarkable book.’ Robert MacFarlane