HTSI editor’s letter: unleash your inner environmental activist
Simply sign up to the Sustainability myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox.
There have been few people as influential in changing our attitudes about the world as the late ethologist and primatologist Jane Goodall. A rock star conservationist and activist, she died this month aged 91 having dedicated 65 years to raising awareness of her field of study. She first emerged as a student of the paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey, alongside Dian Fossey and Birutė Galdikas, a trio of young women popularly known as the Trimates. She later found international stardom as the subject of a 1965 documentary, Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees, after which she became, much to her bemusement, a globally famous celebrity.
Goodall’s legacy will find its fullest expression as Dr Jane’s Dream: The Goodall Centre of Hope, the cultural and educational centre devoted to her life that will open next year in Arusha, Tanzania. In a last major interview, given to HTSI this summer, she described her cause with an undimmed passion: “I’m going to fight until I take my last breath,” she told Joseph Akel in Bournemouth, in a piece that is now, effectively, her last testament.
Akel reminds us that although Goodall’s message was emphatic and deeply earnest, she also remained sunnily optimistic. It’s something that I hope is carried through the other pages in this issue, in which we introduce people making smaller but no less considerable efforts. We first featured Arthur Parkinson four years ago in HTSI: the “chicken boy” had captivated social media. He has now written a book about how to keep hens, and we have published an extract here. It’s not a business for the faint-hearted: in addition to producing lots of free-range eggs, it also means much rat-proofing and flea-repelling.
Meanwhile, I am deeply inspired by this week’s Aesthete, the designer-maker, yogi and martial arts champion Zoe Chan. She moved into Anthony Caro’s former home in Hampstead eight years ago and has since completed an eco-restoration of the extraordinary property. I was especially curious to learn that all of the new structure is built in untreated Douglas fir grown in the UK. She also worked with a company called Fallen & Felled, which collects the plane trees chopped down by councils, to create all of the wood panelling. Chan has used all sorts of historically sympathetic techniques throughout the house, and her home is an inspiration – as is her six-pack, the product of her latest obsession, jiu-jitsu, a hobby she picked up after her daughter started it aged six: she was recently crowned 2025 IBJJF World Masters Champion for blue belt light-featherweights.
Lastly, I am grateful to Nicholas Cullinan, the director of the British Museum, who has given us a guided tour and who will celebrate the institution this weekend with an inaugural gala. The museum hasn’t been without its controversies: since he took over in 2024, he has largely been preoccupied with the ongoing fate of the Parthenon Marbles (’twas ever thus) and reassuring the public that the BM’s astonishing inventory is now in safer hands. But still nothing can shake the wonder of what is at its core: a trove of more than eight million things. His guide introduces us to slightly lesser-known features such as the Prints and Drawings Study Room, the Portable Antiquities Scheme (which manages those objects found by amateur detectorists) and the “ghost museum” that is part of the Western Range. For visitors, it remains a magnificent resource on which to draw. Still available, for free, to anyone who has the privilege to pass through its doors.
Want to read HTSI before everyone else? Get all the top stories straight to your inbox every Friday. Sign up to our free weekly newsletter here
Comments