‘John Henry Gurney: A Passion for Birds’ was published in 2025 by John Beaufoy Publishing in association with the British Ornithologists Club. It was authored by Clive Slater, Peter Munday and Ray Williams. Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne interviews the lead author, Clive Slater.
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- Clive Slater
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- Peter Mundy
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- Ray Williams
Clive Slater read Zoology at King’s College, University of London (1966-1969). Following a career in environmental and public health as a chartered practitioner and university lecturer in the UK and overseas, he was able to pursue his interest in the history of natural history. He initially undertook a study of the history of John Henry Gurney’s famous raptorial collection which had been in Norwich Castle Museum for over 100 years. This led to a collaboration with Peter Mundy and Ray Williams to produce the first biography of John Henry Gurney (1819-1890). Since 2017 Clive has been a Research Associate in natural history at Norfolk Museums Service and has an amateur research interest in Fulmar population changes on the Norfolk coast. Clive lives in Norwich, Norfolk and continues his research on historical ornithology at the Castle Museum.
How did this book come about?
As co-authors of this biography, Peter Mundy, Ray Williams and I combined our three quite different perspectives of John Henry Gurney. Almost 50 years ago, Ray commenced research on a bio-bibliography of the Victorian publisher John Van Voorst (1804-1898) and has published many accounts of the books that Van Voorst produced. One of them, in 2008, concerned Gurney’s Descriptive Catalogue of the Raptorial Birds in the Norfolk and Norwich Museum – Part I. Discovering that Gurney was occupied from 1857 to 1864 in producing Part I but that he never completed the project prompted the obvious question of “why?” Further investigations revealed his misfortunes of the 1860s, including his wife’s elopement, an inevitable divorce, and his entanglement in the notorious financial crash of Overend & Gurney for which the directors were tried for fraud (but acquitted).
When Peter was studying vulture specimens in the bird collection at the Natural History Museum at Tring for his PhD, he noticed some with Norwich Castle Museum labels. Then, much later, having bought a copy of Gurney’s 1884 account of raptors in the Norfolk and Norwich Museum, he realised what a huge collection it must have once been. He asked Clive, his ornithologist friend from university days in the 1960s and now a Norwich resident, to investigate. Apparently, none of the original specimens were present, which sparked their quest to discover more about Gurney and the fate of his remarkable collection. Since so little of his work seemed to have been remembered, Peter and Clive decided that it deserved wider recognition and so set about writing a biography. Since Ray’s 2008 paper on Gurney’s Descriptive Catalogue of the Raptorial Birds had come to Clive’s attention, contact was made, and thus came about our decision to join forces, Peter and I contributing as ornithologists, and Ray as a historian and bibliographer.
How many years was this book in the making?
It was conceived in 2016, so almost a decade. Delays in accessing libraries and museums caused by Covid restrictions were very frustrating. However, the death of our co-author Dr. Peter Mundy in 2023 was devastating but made us all the more determined to complete the book as a testament to him.
What do you want to achieve with this book?
The more we learnt about Gurney’s life and works the more we felt his contribution to ornithology in the 19th century deserved to be better known. Gurney helped lay the foundations of modern ornithology in Victorian times by supporting the fledgling British Ornithologists’ Union and their journal, Ibis, in which he published his papers on raptors and southern African birds, embellished by Joseph Wolf’s illustrations. By his descriptions of new raptorial species and records of worldwide geographical distribution of many species he contributed crucial information to the difficult study of raptors, still a perplexing group. We should also recognise the lasting value of his specimens to modern scholars and the support that he provided to other ornithologists in his day.
Is there a fun fact or something amazing you learnt during the writing of the book?
A most amazing element of Gurney’s character was his fortitude in the face of adversity. Perhaps the most surprising revelations concern Gurney’s private life and how he miraculously managed to continue his ornithological research in the face of so much adversity and personal tragedy, all of which became intertwined with other misfortunes of his wider Norfolk family. Whilst the Overend & Gurney bank crash has been known about for some years, we were able to add some more detail. Most startling of all was the story of Gurney’s wife’s elopement and its tragic impact not only on his own life, but his whole family, and British and American Quakers in general.
Were there any memorable moments during the course of writing this book?
There were several such as discovering the unique ‘bird-skin books’ he made with his young son in the 1860s. We had read accounts of their existence but never expected to find them but there they were in a large wooden chest in the Gurney family archive – a eureka moment! Also, the discovery that Barclays Bank Archive held an amazing collection of letters to Gurney from more than 50 of his ornithologist correspondents was a treasure trove of rich information. Material like this established how deeply he was involved with ornithological issues of the day and how well respected he was by prominent ornithologists around the world seeking his assistance.
For anyone who wishes to pursue this topic more, are there any online resources you would recommend?
Unfortunately, there is no reliable online resource I can recommend.
