My name is Gavin Thurston and I'm here
in Waterstones in Piccadilly and I'm
very excited today because today is the
launch of my first ever book, Journeys in
the Wild: The Secret Life of a Cameraman.
And here it is in my grubby mitts,
literally. I've been trying to write this
book for about 13 years and finally
Orion books got in touch with me,
gave me a contract, and this is a result.
Actually once I'd signed that contract I
had to write the book! I've been a
wildlife cameraman for 36 years,
travelled all over the globe, had lots of
adventures and every time I tell stories
to people at dinner parties and so on
they say you should write a book. Well,
here it is and hopefully some of you
will go and buy it.
It covers all sorts of things, whether
it's wildlife encounters, which is
obviously the main theme of the book,
along with adventures in submarines, I've
been involved in plane crashes, I've got
caught up in coups in Panama, wars in
Sudan, and it's all in here. Kind of an
accidental tourist really. One of the
reasons I ended up being a wildlife
cameraman and working in this industry
is because of one man and I'm sure
actually I'm not alone in saying we've
been inspired by this one man.
And it's this chap here, Sir David
Attenborough. And I've been very
fortunate to work with him over the last
32 years on 17 of his series.
This book is brilliant because it
basically tells you the whole story from
when he started in television aged 26
through to pretty much present-day.
I've heard a lot of the stories
firsthand but also they're all written
down in here so, you know, if
you're a fan of Sir David Attenborough,
or wildlife, or the history of
broadcasting in England; this is a
brilliant book. David Attenborough: Life
on Air. Through my career I've been very
fortunate to travel the globe and see
all sorts of amazing things and
countries and habitats and so on. One man
who did it many, many years ago is
William Dampier and this is a brilliant
book all about his life. It was written
by Diana and Michael Preston. They collated all the history and documents and so
on and put it together in one neat book.
This was actually recommended to me to
read by Sir David Attenborough. Basically
set in the 17th century, William Dampier
got on board ships and he traveled
around partly as a kind of pirate you
know ransacking other ships and stealing
stuff, which isn't the great thing, but
one thing that was amazing about him he
was very observant and he kept really
good notes. And he was one of the first
people to recognise the idea of
tides and the rhythm of tides, you know,
high and low tides. He was also one of
the first people to recognise that
species change as you go around the
globe. And in fact it was William
Dampier's observations about speciation
and change of species around the globe
that influenced Darwin to write Origin
of Species. So I can't recommend this
highly enough; it's a rip-roaring
adventure with a lot of history in there.
A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: The Life of
William Dampier. Many years ago my
grandmother gave me a book. This one, it's
by Jack London and it's actually two
sets of stories. It's The Call of the Wild
and White Fang. And I hung onto the
book for two, three, four years and
eventually I took it with me. I thought I
must read that book my granny gave me
and I took it on a shoot and I was
filming in northern Quebec. And we were
there to film the caribou migration and
of course every evening it's dark by
about 6pm so it's a great time to put
my head torch on and actually get stuck
into this book. And it's the story about
two men taking a body from one side of
Alaska to the other side of Alaska,
trying to get the body back for burial.
And on the route they get followed by
some wolves.
Anyway, as I read the book through each
chapter the real events unfolded.
Not that we had a dead body with us but the real
events unfolded for real where I was
filming. Eventually we ended up having a
wolf coming in 15 feet from us right
next to a, you know, blazing fire. But it's a really good read, it's an
absolute classic, I can't recommend it
highly enough. Jack London, The Call of
the Wild and, particularly, White Fang.
