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

Richard Fortey retired from his position as senior palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in 2006. His previous books include the critically acclaimed Life: An Unauthorized Biography, Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution, The Hidden Landscape, which won the Natural World Book of the Year in 1993 and Fossils - A Key to the Past which is now in its third edition. He also won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Science Writing in 2003. He was Collier Professor for the Public Understanding of Science in 2002, has been elected to be President of the Geological Society of London for its bicentennial year of 2007, and is a member of the Royal Society. His latest book is Dry Store Room no 1 – The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum.