Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind

PRAISE FOR RICHARD FORTEY

‘Dazzling … Richard Fortey is without peer amongst science writers’ Bill Bryson

‘This is the way science should be written: so engagingly that it makes you forget that you’re actually learning something (actually, you’re learning a lot), and carrying you swiftly from page to page… filled with insight, science, history, charm and wit’ The Times

‘Fortey’s books are always a treat. It’s not just that they are beautifully written in mellifluous prose but that his vision is wonderfully humane’ Evening Standard

‘Fortey’s prose is a joy … his sharp eye and ceaselessly inquiring mind are an inspiration’ Daily Mail

‘Delightful and beautifully written, Fortey has an eye for the world about him that would be envied by some travel writers… interesting and impassioned’ Literary Review

Professor Richard Fortey is a celebrated scientist, writer and television presenter with a long career in palaeontology at the Natural History Museum in London. He studied Geology at Cambridge University and since 1997, has been a member of the Royal Society. He is one of the few scientists who is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He has published numerous books: The Hidden Landscape won the Natural World Book of the Year (1993), Life was short-listed for the Rhône-Poulenc Prize (1998) and Trilobite! was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize (2001). He was elected President of the Geological Society of London for its bicentennial year (2007) and was awarded the Geological Society Lyell Medal for significant contribution to geology. In 2023, he was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List. He lives in Oxfordshire where over four decades he has indulged his passion for the study of fungi.