Francis, who had arrived at Howorth two years after the wilding began, was given the job of monitoring the resurgence of species and taking visitors on tours of the estate. He found himself living in a world of growing richness, a hotspot for nightingales and turtledoves, a place that might help save a species from extinction and where scientific knowledge was being advanced. The Purple Emperor cocoon, for instance, that he had seen ensconced on the branch of some scrubland sallow in the middle of a field, disproved the established view that the Emperor was a woodland butterfly. Agriculture had simply eliminated isolated sallow before the observations were recorded in scientific literature. There had been one clear-water pond on the estate in the agricultural days, less polluted by nitrate run-off than the others, where the rare water violet led its happily neglected life. Now, the violet had spread to the other ponds and, radiating around them, there was also a series of ‘scrapes’ – shallow indentations made to collect rain. Sometimes in the early summer, before they dried out, Francis had seen animals gathering around these ephemeral watering holes in a density that seemed more African than English; deer and cattle drinking, ducks and moorhens swimming, swallows and dragonflies dipping, and the cries of nearby skylarks piercing the chatter of all the other birds twisting through the air above the water and the reeds.

The flat land around Howorth, with its heavy clay soil, set in one of the most densely populated parts of the country, was quite different from the Somerset village where Francis had been brought up, on the edge of the Quantocks, the first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty to be designated in England. The village contained a house where Coleridge had lived for a couple of years. About thirty miles away, on Exmoor, was Ash Farm where he had been writing ‘Kubla Khan’ before he was interrupted by the ‘person from Porlock’ – a coastal village which Francis often visited as a child, scanning the beach for the vandal who had done such a disservice to poor old Coleridge. Francis’s father had dreamt of becoming a vet, but there had not been enough money to complete his training and he had taken up a job in the Taunton branch of Lloyds where his parents’ small dairy farm had its debts. It was supposed to be a temporary measure, but between the mortgage and the costs of bringing up a child, there had never been time to go back to his vocation and so he led his life as a reluctant banker, specialising in agricultural loans, which at least allowed him to drive around the countryside to visit clients who appreciated the astute and compassionate gaze he brought to their herds and flocks.