Fingers in the Sparkle Jar

A beautifully told, deeply personal growing-up memoir from the BBC presenter about life, death, love and nature. An introverted, unusual young boy, isolated by his obsessions and a loner at school, Chris Packham only felt happy in the fields and woods around his suburban home. But when he stole a young Kestrel from its nest, he was about to embark on a friendship that would teach him what it meant to love, and that would change him forever. In his rich, lyrical, and emotionally exposing memoir, Chris brings to life his childhood in the 1970s, from his bedroom bursting with fox skulls, birds' eggs, and sweaty jam jars, to his feral adventures. But pervading his story is the search for freedom, meaning, and acceptance in a world that didn’t understand him. Beautifully wrought, this coming-of-age memoir will be unlike any you've ever read.

Chris Packham is a TV presenter, photographer, and conservationist. He is best known for the BAFTA-winning The Really Wild Show and fronting BBC’s Springwatch and Autumnwatch. Packham is president of the British Trust for Ornithology, Hawk Conservancy Trust, the Hampshire Ornithological Society, and the Bat Conservation Trust, and vice-president of the RSPB and the Butterfly Conservation. In 2011, he was awarded the British Trust for Ornithology's Dilys Breese Medal, and in 2016 he won the Wildscreen Panda Award for Outstanding Achievement, for his contribution to wildlife filmmaking.