"Dr Kat Hoobaiter has documented a repertoire of around 80 distinct chimpanzee gestures, showing how apes use them intentionally. It isn’t a huge leap from here to the apes in The Angel of St Piran."
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| Stephen Joseph Photography |
John answers questions from Linda Newbery.
With your background in zoology, it’s not surprising that animals – and human interactions with animals – are the foundation of much of your fiction. Did you have a career in zoology before turning to writing fiction?
John: Ahh … only very briefly. I worked for three years as a research assistant in Liverpool looking at freshwater leeches, and afterwards I travelled with my wife Sue to Nigeria to lecture in zoology at a new university in the north of the country; but for a whole host of reasons the job didn’t work out and we came back to England. After that I went to work in the IT industry and there I stayed until I started to sell books.
Linda: You came relatively late to writing fiction – what prompted that?
John: I really didn’t come late to writing – I just came late to being published. I’ve been writing fiction since my teens, and over the years I wrote several novels and quite a few that were never finished. I never had much confidence in my skills as a writer, so no one ever read these early stories, and now all are lost forever; this is probably a good thing though because I’m sure they were terrible. But it was a good way to learn the craft.
Linda: Clearly the ground-breaking work of the late Jane Goodall, living and making relationships with chimpanzees, was one of the inspirations for your novel, as you acknowledge in the afternotes. I’ve read of other recent advances, too, in our understanding of how various animals communicate – whales, apes, birds. Is this a field you’ve worked in, professionally or otherwise?
John: As a teenager I worked one long vacation at a research station in Tsavo National Park, Kenya, on a project tracking family groups of elephants in the reserve. It wasn’t intentionally focussed on animal communication, but it was a fascinating introduction to fieldwork. We would often remark to each other that the elephants seemed to communicate. We simply didn’t know how. At university, Jane Goodall’s book ‘In the Shadow of Man,’ was one of our set books. I was gripped by it. I had seen chimps in Uganda, but I had never heard of a researcher living with the apes. It struck me then (and still does now) as an extraordinarily courageous and exciting thing to do. I often thought of it as potential material for a novel. Since Jane Goodall’s work other researchers have pushed forward our understanding of chimpanzee communication. Most recently Dr Kat Hoobaiter from Stirling University, working with chimpanzees in Uganda, has documented a repertoire of around 80 distinct chimpanzee gestures, showing how apes use them intentionally. It isn’t a huge leap from here to the apes in The Angel of St Piran.
Linda: Many of us are revolted by photographs of trophy-hunters posing with their kills, but often this is countered by the idea that managed trophy-hunting can benefit habitats, animal populations and local communities. What’s your view of this argument?
John: Any activity that revels in the killing of a wild animal is morally indefensible in my view. I know trophy hunters will claim to be conservationists, but I don’t accept this for one moment. It is a baseless smoke-screen for their blood lust. Local communities earn almost nothing from hunting, despite the high fees charged by operators. There is far more sustainable income from wildlife tourism. And trophy hunters shoot the largest, strongest, and most reproductively important animals. If trophy hunters were conservationists they would swap their rifles for cameras and become wildlife photographers. But they are too slow witted to handle a camera, and they are too vain to indulge in an activity where they don’t get to appear in the photograph.
Linda: Although the setting for this novel is mainly a Tanzanian island, some sections take place in Cornwall, and two earlier novels, Not Forgetting the Whale and The Wager and the Bear, are set there too. You live in Cheshire now, but do you have links to Cornwall?
John: My mother was Cornish. She grew up in the seaside village of Mevagissey. When I was 17 my parents decided to retire to Mevagissey from our home in Nairobi. They bought the village shop, and I found myself reluctantly dropped into this little isolated community far from anywhere. I hated it. But only for a very short while. Unexpectedly I grew to love it, and for years I wanted to write about it. The village of St Piran in my novels is loosely based on my memories of Mevagissey. It turns out to be a location full of interesting people, with fascinating stories to tell. I’ve used it in three novels so far. As for my links to Cornwall, I still have cousins there, and I still visit when I can. Never often enough, of course.
Linda: Fly on the Wall Press sounds like an interesting independent publisher. How did you come to be published by them – and are there plans for more books?
John: I don’t have a short answer to this question I’m afraid. Can I get away with saying that Orion Books and I parted company after a novel of mine failed to set the world alight. Which was a shame because it was my personal favourite. But it launched when the bookshops were closed during Covid, and big publishers have algorithms that don’t take account of these things. The up-side was that I discovered Fly on the Wall, a small indie with loads of energy that punches way above its weight, and this is where I want to stay. If they’ll have me.
Linda: Your first published book was a non-fiction title, The Good Zoo Guide, published in 1994. Have you any plans to update it? Since writing it, have your views on keeping animals in captivity changed at all? Do you think public attitudes to captive animals, not just in zoos but in dolphinariums and other tourist attractions, are changing?
John: The thought of updating The Good Zoo Guide gives me heart palpitations. It was so much work. I had to visit around 150 zoos, aquariums, bird gardens, safari parks and some grim menageries, and once done, I re-visited the top fifty … twice. It was exhausting. After the book was published it was about ten years before I went back to a zoo. I don’t disapprove of zoos. I would say instead that I really like good zoos and I hate bad ones. There are some animals that, in my view, should never be kept in captivity - like dolphins, polar bears, and whales … but there are many others that can be kept in high welfare habitats, and there are plenty of species that actively need a reservoir of individuals in safe captive conditions because they really aren’t safe in the wild. Public attitudes have certainly changed. The small cages and the city zoos that were popular fifty years ago have almost all been replaced by spacious, out-of-town zoos and specialist collections. And that’s a good thing. So now I visit zoos occasionally. But I’m particular about the zoos I visit.
Linda: First, congratulations on the publication of The Angel of St Piran. I’ve read an advance copy – it’s based on a striking but certainly not implausible concept, that chimpanzees and humans can communicate verbally, and is very topical with its focus on trophy hunting, as well as being a gripping page-turner.
With your background in zoology, it’s not surprising that animals – and human interactions with animals – are the foundation of much of your fiction. Did you have a career in zoology before turning to writing fiction?
John: Ahh … only very briefly. I worked for three years as a research assistant in Liverpool looking at freshwater leeches, and afterwards I travelled with my wife Sue to Nigeria to lecture in zoology at a new university in the north of the country; but for a whole host of reasons the job didn’t work out and we came back to England. After that I went to work in the IT industry and there I stayed until I started to sell books.
Linda: You came relatively late to writing fiction – what prompted that?
John: I really didn’t come late to writing – I just came late to being published. I’ve been writing fiction since my teens, and over the years I wrote several novels and quite a few that were never finished. I never had much confidence in my skills as a writer, so no one ever read these early stories, and now all are lost forever; this is probably a good thing though because I’m sure they were terrible. But it was a good way to learn the craft.
Linda: Clearly the ground-breaking work of the late Jane Goodall, living and making relationships with chimpanzees, was one of the inspirations for your novel, as you acknowledge in the afternotes. I’ve read of other recent advances, too, in our understanding of how various animals communicate – whales, apes, birds. Is this a field you’ve worked in, professionally or otherwise?
John: As a teenager I worked one long vacation at a research station in Tsavo National Park, Kenya, on a project tracking family groups of elephants in the reserve. It wasn’t intentionally focussed on animal communication, but it was a fascinating introduction to fieldwork. We would often remark to each other that the elephants seemed to communicate. We simply didn’t know how. At university, Jane Goodall’s book ‘In the Shadow of Man,’ was one of our set books. I was gripped by it. I had seen chimps in Uganda, but I had never heard of a researcher living with the apes. It struck me then (and still does now) as an extraordinarily courageous and exciting thing to do. I often thought of it as potential material for a novel. Since Jane Goodall’s work other researchers have pushed forward our understanding of chimpanzee communication. Most recently Dr Kat Hoobaiter from Stirling University, working with chimpanzees in Uganda, has documented a repertoire of around 80 distinct chimpanzee gestures, showing how apes use them intentionally. It isn’t a huge leap from here to the apes in The Angel of St Piran.
Linda: Many of us are revolted by photographs of trophy-hunters posing with their kills, but often this is countered by the idea that managed trophy-hunting can benefit habitats, animal populations and local communities. What’s your view of this argument?
John: Any activity that revels in the killing of a wild animal is morally indefensible in my view. I know trophy hunters will claim to be conservationists, but I don’t accept this for one moment. It is a baseless smoke-screen for their blood lust. Local communities earn almost nothing from hunting, despite the high fees charged by operators. There is far more sustainable income from wildlife tourism. And trophy hunters shoot the largest, strongest, and most reproductively important animals. If trophy hunters were conservationists they would swap their rifles for cameras and become wildlife photographers. But they are too slow witted to handle a camera, and they are too vain to indulge in an activity where they don’t get to appear in the photograph.
Linda: Although the setting for this novel is mainly a Tanzanian island, some sections take place in Cornwall, and two earlier novels, Not Forgetting the Whale and The Wager and the Bear, are set there too. You live in Cheshire now, but do you have links to Cornwall?
John: My mother was Cornish. She grew up in the seaside village of Mevagissey. When I was 17 my parents decided to retire to Mevagissey from our home in Nairobi. They bought the village shop, and I found myself reluctantly dropped into this little isolated community far from anywhere. I hated it. But only for a very short while. Unexpectedly I grew to love it, and for years I wanted to write about it. The village of St Piran in my novels is loosely based on my memories of Mevagissey. It turns out to be a location full of interesting people, with fascinating stories to tell. I’ve used it in three novels so far. As for my links to Cornwall, I still have cousins there, and I still visit when I can. Never often enough, of course.
Linda: Fly on the Wall Press sounds like an interesting independent publisher. How did you come to be published by them – and are there plans for more books?
John: I don’t have a short answer to this question I’m afraid. Can I get away with saying that Orion Books and I parted company after a novel of mine failed to set the world alight. Which was a shame because it was my personal favourite. But it launched when the bookshops were closed during Covid, and big publishers have algorithms that don’t take account of these things. The up-side was that I discovered Fly on the Wall, a small indie with loads of energy that punches way above its weight, and this is where I want to stay. If they’ll have me.
Linda: Your first published book was a non-fiction title, The Good Zoo Guide, published in 1994. Have you any plans to update it? Since writing it, have your views on keeping animals in captivity changed at all? Do you think public attitudes to captive animals, not just in zoos but in dolphinariums and other tourist attractions, are changing?
John: The thought of updating The Good Zoo Guide gives me heart palpitations. It was so much work. I had to visit around 150 zoos, aquariums, bird gardens, safari parks and some grim menageries, and once done, I re-visited the top fifty … twice. It was exhausting. After the book was published it was about ten years before I went back to a zoo. I don’t disapprove of zoos. I would say instead that I really like good zoos and I hate bad ones. There are some animals that, in my view, should never be kept in captivity - like dolphins, polar bears, and whales … but there are many others that can be kept in high welfare habitats, and there are plenty of species that actively need a reservoir of individuals in safe captive conditions because they really aren’t safe in the wild. Public attitudes have certainly changed. The small cages and the city zoos that were popular fifty years ago have almost all been replaced by spacious, out-of-town zoos and specialist collections. And that’s a good thing. So now I visit zoos occasionally. But I’m particular about the zoos I visit.
Linda: Two of your titles, The Year of the Dugong and The Wager and the Bear, could be described as ‘cli-fi’. When writing about animals in particular, the impacts of climate change and nature loss are hard to ignore. Do you think fiction can help to raise awareness and inspire change?
John: I hope fiction can change minds, but I worry that the impact is only marginal. The scale of the climate threat is far beyond any crisis that mankind has ever faced. The changes we are making to our climate are irreversible, and catastrophic. I don’t know how we convince a sceptical political class and an apathetic electorate that we need to act decisively and massively if we are to slow down and maybe halt the damage we are doing. But fiction is all I know, so it is my way of railing against fossil fuel apologists and the forces of climate denial.
Linda: Your books have had impressive reach, being recognised in awards and translated into fifteen languages. Has this, and your zoological background, led to opportunities to take part in animal advocacy?
John: I am very lucky to have been able to reach a wide audience, and I am so grateful to all those publishers around the world who have believed in my books. To be honest it hasn’t led to any particular advocacy opportunities, although I know from my email inbox that readers have been inspired by the stories.
Linda: It’s easy to feel despair when we read about the sheer scale of animal cruelty, on farms, in laboratories, in wildlife crime and in entertainment. But do you see hope for a more compassionate future, and if so, where?
John: Without a doubt we are all much more aware of animal cruelty now than we ever were. Public attitudes have undergone a generational shift. Across the world, people now speak openly about animal sentience, suffering, and rights in a way that would have been fringe even 20 years ago. Factory farming is increasingly seen as ethically indefensible. Cosmetic testing on animals has become socially unacceptable. Circuses no longer keep elephants or lions. No one goes to bull fights when they visit Spain. Catwalk models no longer wear furs. So I do see good reasons for hope. And I applaud people who name and shame trophy hunters online. It is one of the last bastions of animal cruelty.
Linda: Finally, can you give us some recommendations – either of cli-fi novels, or of books that increase our understanding of animals?
John: I’m going to recommend two books that I read this year, although I realise as I say this that both deal with animal extinction. Beasts of the Sea by Ida Turpeinen is a novel that traces the discovery, exploitation, and eventual extinction of a marine mammal known as ‘Steller’s Sea Cow.’ It is a beautiful, lyrical book – translated from Finnish, and it has profound lessons for us on the way we treat the natural world. Today, I’m halfway through reading The Last of its Kind, by Gisli Palsson – a nonfiction book and an impressive piece of scholarship, about the search for the Great Auk – a bird they used to call the ‘northern penguin,’ and how the disappearance of this bird led to the first awakening in the public mind of the reality and finality of extinction.
John: I hope fiction can change minds, but I worry that the impact is only marginal. The scale of the climate threat is far beyond any crisis that mankind has ever faced. The changes we are making to our climate are irreversible, and catastrophic. I don’t know how we convince a sceptical political class and an apathetic electorate that we need to act decisively and massively if we are to slow down and maybe halt the damage we are doing. But fiction is all I know, so it is my way of railing against fossil fuel apologists and the forces of climate denial.
Linda: Your books have had impressive reach, being recognised in awards and translated into fifteen languages. Has this, and your zoological background, led to opportunities to take part in animal advocacy?
John: I am very lucky to have been able to reach a wide audience, and I am so grateful to all those publishers around the world who have believed in my books. To be honest it hasn’t led to any particular advocacy opportunities, although I know from my email inbox that readers have been inspired by the stories.
Linda: It’s easy to feel despair when we read about the sheer scale of animal cruelty, on farms, in laboratories, in wildlife crime and in entertainment. But do you see hope for a more compassionate future, and if so, where?
John: Without a doubt we are all much more aware of animal cruelty now than we ever were. Public attitudes have undergone a generational shift. Across the world, people now speak openly about animal sentience, suffering, and rights in a way that would have been fringe even 20 years ago. Factory farming is increasingly seen as ethically indefensible. Cosmetic testing on animals has become socially unacceptable. Circuses no longer keep elephants or lions. No one goes to bull fights when they visit Spain. Catwalk models no longer wear furs. So I do see good reasons for hope. And I applaud people who name and shame trophy hunters online. It is one of the last bastions of animal cruelty.
Linda: Finally, can you give us some recommendations – either of cli-fi novels, or of books that increase our understanding of animals?
John: I’m going to recommend two books that I read this year, although I realise as I say this that both deal with animal extinction. Beasts of the Sea by Ida Turpeinen is a novel that traces the discovery, exploitation, and eventual extinction of a marine mammal known as ‘Steller’s Sea Cow.’ It is a beautiful, lyrical book – translated from Finnish, and it has profound lessons for us on the way we treat the natural world. Today, I’m halfway through reading The Last of its Kind, by Gisli Palsson – a nonfiction book and an impressive piece of scholarship, about the search for the Great Auk – a bird they used to call the ‘northern penguin,’ and how the disappearance of this bird led to the first awakening in the public mind of the reality and finality of extinction.
Linda: Thank you, John. We at Writers Review wish you every success for The Angel of St Piran.
The Angel of St Piran is published by Fly on the Wall Press
