Philippa A ReesAbout the Author's Life: Reconciliation of extremes could be said to be the overarching theme, both in this book and in the author's life. An only child in the conflicted world of apartheid South Africa, she had a grandfather fluent in both Zulu and wahili and a grandmother who claimed to be related to Elizabeth Barrett Browning with an aunt who knew George Eliot. She did not believe either claim! That was the hybrid blood. Then other ingredients were enfolded: the languages that this book would draw upon: Theology and Metaphysical poetry at school, and almost every faculty at University, from Medicine through Architecture and Fine Art, until Classics gave way to Psychology and Zoology, studying under the seminal palaeontologist Raymond Dart and the father of embryology, B.I. Balinsky. Later, marriage to a marine biologist and photographer meant a nomadic life on deserted Mozambique islands with fiddler crabs and mangrove swamps. An association with Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz, at the Max Planck Institute introduced the dynamic field of animal behaviour. Later, she lectured on Saints and Scientists at Bristol University. Safari of a Patchwork Pilgrim is her creative recovery of an extraordinary life. Through writing it, she discovered George Eliot 'seated' at her own family's fire in South Africa! Read More Read Less