Peter Shirley

This audio clip is from a series of 100 life history interviews with environmental campaigners in the UK, 1970-2020. A quotation from this recording features in the book Voices for Change, published by UCL Press in November 2026 (available in print as well as a free PDF download). The full interview, along with the summaries, transcripts and recordings for this and the rest of the interview collection, is available at the British Library (Sound and Moving Image Collection, under the shelf-mark C2037). For more information, including educational materials and other resources, visit the Oral History of the Environmental Movement project website at www.royalholloway.ac.uk/ohemQuotation:Barbara Brayshay: So just track back a little bit to say as a younger child at primary school, were you interested in nature or did you have-Peter Shirley: Oh yes. I’ve always been interested in insects for some reason. So I was the sort of child that would take beetles in in a matchbox to school to show other people. So yes, I always had an inclination towards nature.Barbara Brayshay: Just thinking about the neighbourhood that you were living in, did you have opportunities to explore, I mean to catch those beetles?Peter Shirley: Well it was a very different world then for children to what it is now. So yes, I mean from quite an early age in the school holidays, you’d be out with your mates for most of the day. You’d probably go home for lunch. Yes, but you’d be playing football or cricket in the street. I mean by the time I was ten or eleven, I was walking a mile to the local park on my own or with friends but no adult supervision. Then you’d play in the park until you were tired or whatever and you’d go home, yes.Barbara Brayshay: Would you be looking for beetles and things while you were playing with your friends?Peter Shirley: Well probably not while I was playing football but yes, I’d be grubbing about in hedgerows and stuff like that, yes.Barbara Brayshay: That’s an interesting thing as a child to be interested in insects because quite often the children are frightened of beetles and spiders and things like that.Peter Shirley: Yes, people do have phobias about these things but I never suffered from any of that.British Library catalogue number: C2037/68 Project clip number: 6