Illustrated Naked Ape (0517563207) by Morris, Desmond Illustrated Naked Ape 3.94 avg rating • 6,577 ratings by GoodReads Publisher:Random House Value Publishing, 1986 Edition: Shipping prices may be approximate. Please verify cost before checkout. About the book: When The Naked Ape was published in 1967 a new phrase entered the English language and many other languages besides. Desmond Morris's unique treatment of homo sapiens caught the imagination of the public and the media in an extraordinary way. In the three months after publication there were 1,883 column inches of reviews, scores of radio and television items, not to mention the gossip columns and newspaper cartoons. The Sunday Times called it 'the sort of book that changes lives'. Since then it has sold over eight million copies around the world. Now a captivating and pertinent collection of illustrations has been assembled to complement the arguments so provocatively and entertainingly conveyed in Dr Morris' text. Nearly twenty years after it first appeared we can reassess his controversial ideas with the help of the fifty-six pages of colour illuminating this beautiful book. Search under way... Search complete.

Compare book prices from over 100,000 booksellers. Click on the price to find out more about a book. New books: 1 - 12 of 12 # Stephen Moss on Desmond Morris, the man who wrote the groundbreaking book The Naked Ape | Books | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close Desmond Morris is keen on the concept of playfulness, and thinks it tell us a lot about humanity's evolution. Our playfulness fuels our ingenuity and inventiveness, allowed us to defeat physically more powerful species to become global top dogs, and explains how we ended up wearing clothes, playing computer games, dropping "smart" bombs and watching Strictly Come Dancing. We play, therefore we are.

You can't help thinking about Morris's playfulness theory when you meet him: a large, beaming, soon-to-be-80-year-old surrounded by books (many of which were written by him) and surrealist paintings (all of which were painted by him) in a converted coach house at the back of his rambling home in Oxford - the very house, he tells me at least twice, in which 19th-century lexicographer James Murray laboured for more than 30 years on the Oxford English Dictionary (he died having got to T). We talk, meanderingly, for three hours; I'm knackered by the end, but Morris remains arm-wavingly irrepressible, and only stops because his wife is ill and rings from the house for a cuppa (we also seem to be ending at tea). Otherwise, I'd probably still be there.

Morris has just produced The Naked Man, a companion book to The Naked Woman, which appeared in 2004, and the latest in an evolutionary line stretching back to his career-defining, life-changing, collective-mentality-altering The Naked Ape, an instant bestseller when it was published in 1967 and now heading for sales of 20m. He has made a career out of telling us that 10,000 years of "civilisation" cannot offset several million years of hunter-gathering, and that we now live a life that is, in many ways, at odds with our genetic inheritance. Morris's theories do not endear him to feminists. The phrase he uses most often to describe men is "risk-takers". He says that for a million years or more men had to go out and face down woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers, develop strategies to overcome them (cooperation to fight common foes, he emphasises, is genetically more important to man than the competitive urge), and "bring home the bacon - literally", while women cleaned the cave, raised the serial litter that is unique to the human species, and organised every other aspect of life.

His view, anathema to many fellow scientists as well as to feminists, is that this genetic separation can't be wished away by equality legislation. "There was considerable specialisation for the male and the female," he says. "Men became more athletic and did the hunting; women did everything else. They were multitasking, to use a phrase that has become very popular, and were at the centre of society. It's not a question of superiority and inferiority. It's a question of differences, and these differences are very real." Men were expendable; women, because of their reproductive function, weren't. "You couldn't afford to lose a woman," he says, "They were too valuable, so the males became the specialist hunters." For the whole of prehistory, this separation of roles worked well, Morris says - a perfect union designed to rear young and perpetuate the species. The problem came when we started to expand from our natural tribal groups of around 100 and develop big settlements. "For a million years, women were at the centre of society and men were on the periphery," says Morris. "I don't see why women get so upset about this: women ran society, men were in the hunting ground.

The sad thing for women is that, over a period of time, the hunting grounds became the city centres, and so instead of being on the periphery, men were now in the centre of the cities running things. The cities were the hunting grounds, although now the hunting was metaphorical. Urbanisation favoured the male." Feminists could take this two ways. The upside is that Morris thinks women should run more or less everything. "We'd be much better off if women ran most of the organisations," he says. "If women ran the political world rather than men, for instance. I don't think men are suited to politics. Women are much more suited because they are genetically more cautious and are not going to make stupid mistakes." The downside, feminism-wise, is that Morris thinks that men, because of their natural risk-taking, will always be better inventors and artists. "For every one great woman artist, there are 100 men," says Morris. "There are more male geniuses than female geniuses, and there are more male idiots than female idiots. If you're a human female, you can't afford to be a risk-taker and you can't afford to be a dimwit.

You have to be in between those two extremes." Man's artistic dominance, he argues, cannot be explained by opportunity or social conditioning. Over the whole of evolution, women have produced more art than men - in the form of decorated pottery and clothing - but they have tended to produce traditional art. It is men who have flouted the rules and produced most of the great, mould-breaking art. Morris also has a theory about car crashes. "Women have more accidents but men have bigger accidents," he says. "If you're going to have a big car crash, it's always a man; if you're going to get a dented fender, it's a woman. You hardly ever hear of a high-speed crash involving a woman; it's always a man." He expresses his theory forcefully, vividly; you sense, anecdotally, that there may be something in it; but you would also like to see the insurance stats to prove it. Morris paints with a very broad brush. The other area where Morris's new book has already proved controversial is his take on homosexuality. This is dealt with in the final chapter of the book and feels tacked on, as if the publisher insisted the subject be covered.

Morris has borrowed a theory from his friend and fellow zoologist Clive Bromhall, who in his book The Eternal Child argued that a key feature of our evolutionary history has been the extension of childhood and the postponement of breeding. The social effect of that process has been that for 10 years, between the ages of about four and 14, boys and girls have tended to play together in separate groups. At puberty, the sexes - driven by the need to reproduce - come together, but for largely social reasons (these are left irritatingly vague) a small proportion of men and women continue to prefer their own sex. Homosexuality is "genetically instigated but then environmentally influenced", he says. Gay men, he argues, are at the extreme end of the "playfulness" spectrum, and likely to be more creative than the average. One of the key features of humans, according to his overall theory, is that unlike other species we never lose the curiosity and inventiveness of youth. Homosexual people, he says, exhibit that "Peter Pan syndrome" to an extreme degree, giving them above-average intelligence, inventiveness and creativity.

The theory, to my untutored ears, sounds tenuous, and for once Morris doesn't express it very fluently - he seems embarrassed to be relying on someone else's thinking. Morris, a genetically useful iconoclast and provocateur, prides himself on simplifying science for the general reader without distorting, but I wonder about the way these large hypotheses on homosexuality are skipped over in just seven pages of what is effectively a coda to the book. The Naked Man exemplifies the tensions - and the pleasures - in Morris's richly varied career. The book is a long way from The Reproductive Behaviour of the Ten-Spined Stickleback, for which he was awarded his doctorate at Oxford in 1954.

He could have had a distinguished career as what might be called an institutionalised zoologist - and for much of his time he has had exactly that - but in the late 1950s he fell among that dangerous tribe of television people, joining Granada to make the programme Zoo Time, which taught him how to popularise without dumbing down too much, made him a name and led to him writing The Naked Ape, which treated humans as animals and sought to explain all human behaviour in zoological terms. Man was not a moral or a spiritual being; he was an animal, an ape with pretensions to be something greater. "I spent the first half of my life studying animal behaviour," says Morris, "and when I eventually wrote a book about human beings, I wrote about them as if I was writing about another animal species. I had met Tom Maschler, then a young publisher at Cape, at a party and told him I was going to write a zoology of human beings one day, and not even use the term human beings. Instead I'd write it as if I was an alien who had come to this planet and seen this extraordinary ape which doesn't have any fur on its body.

Tom loved the idea, but it took him three years to persuade me to write it, and when I eventually set to work I had to complete it in four weeks because I was so busy. I just sat down and wrote. It was written with such intensity that I can remember it to this day." It was a publishing sensation that caught a moment when everything was being rethought: while attractive to radicals, who wanted to strip away layers of political and religious authority and liked the notion of unfettered man, it infuriated feminists, who accused it of promoting a male-centred view of human evolution. It became a cause celebre - Maschler's instinct had been spot on - and made zoology part of the late-60s zeitgeist. The irony is that Morris was an accidental zoologist. His first love was art - he intended to be a surrealist painter - and he only applied to study zoology at Birmingham because he had a low opinion of art schools and felt a study of biomorphic shapes would be useful to his painting. He exhibited in London with Joan Miro in 1950, but that was surrealism's last throw in the UK and he realised he would never make a living.

He had, in any case, been bitten by the zoology bug at Birmingham and couldn't resist the lure of the ten-spined stickleback. Morris never stopped painting, though he didn't exhibit between 1952 and 1974, and his coach house is neatly divided into halves that sum up the two compartments of his life. "I have a library with all my scientific books and a room with my art books and my paintings," he says. "It's like two hemispheres of my brain." Who else, you wonder, could in the mid-1960s have gone from being head of mammals at London Zoo - the job he had been given after the success of Zoo Time - to director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts? "From rhinos to Picassos," as he sums up a wondrously odd move. He didn't stay at the ICA long. The runaway success of The Naked Ape allowed him to run away - he says he knew it was a sensation when he heard Burt Lancaster had bought the film rights.

He quit his job and, with his wife Ramona, went to live in Malta, where he started painting again in earnest, lived a life of sunny, self-conscious hedonism, and produced a son, Jason. Morris was almost 40 when he left for Malta - burned out, he says, after 15 years of frenetic activity. "A few months before I wrote The Naked Ape my health collapsed. When I recovered I said, 'Right, that's it,' and I cut out a lot of things. I realised that I had to cut down. I was trying to live like a machine when in fact I was just an animal. I focused all my efforts on one thing, which was The Naked Ape. I sat down and wrote it in the autumn of 1966. I hadn't any hopes for it; I didn't expect it to do anything. People say I must have known what I was doing. They think I deliberately wrote it to make a shocking bestseller, but it wasn't like that." Intentional or not, that was what it became, and he was determined to enjoy the money and freedom it brought him.

"I didn't intend to stay in Malta for very long, but it stretched for five or six years. I had a studio and painted. I wrote in the winter, painted in the summer. We had all our friends out to stay. My childlike curiosity, which I've maintained all my life, demands new experiences, and this was something I'd never experienced before. My mother was horrified. She said, 'Put the money in the bank,' as mothers do, but I said, 'No, I'm going to spend it all, and when it's all spent I'll come back to work, because I like work.' And that's what I did. I spent most of it, and then came back and started research again here at Oxford." In 1973 he returned to the UK with his family to take up a research fellowship at Wolfson College, seeking to combine hard science with populist books. The Human Zoo and Intimate Behaviour, both written in Malta, were followed by Manwatching (which developed the concept of "body language"), The Soccer Tribe, Catwatching, Dogwatching and Babywatching.

He resumed his TV career and travelled widely - a map of the world in the corridor that connects his art-world with his science-world is covered with pins marking the places he has visited. He has clearly had a ball, adores his wife of 55 years, remains fascinated by art and film, and has even come to quite like his fellow humans after early doubts. An intense only child, he had spent much of his adolescence watching his father die of wounds received in the first world war and, as a teenager confronted with the loss of his father and the start of a second global conflict, he took a dim view of his fellow naked apes, finding solace in art and the natural world. Regrets? "I should have stuck at the art," he says. "I think I had the potential to be a good artist. I still consider myself a serious artist but a very minor one, and I'm a minor artist because I've been doing too many other things. My strength is that I do lots of different things; my weakness is that I don't stick at any of them long enough." Does he envy David Attenborough, who 50 years ago used to present Zoo Quest on the BBC while Morris did Zoo Time on ITV?

His TV rival - and good friend - carried on making programmes and remains a vital presence on television, lauded for his commitment to quality broadcasting. "I'm not an envious person," says Morris. "It's one of my few good qualities. David has stuck to his guns, gone right the way through the whole animal kingdom, and made the best programmes about animals ever. They will be a lasting monument to him. David has his huge collection of natural history programmes which together make a brilliant study. I would have liked to have been somebody who had done a major study, but on the other hand I've had the pleasure of being like a child all my life and having new toys all the time." The perfect image of the playful, risk- taking male. Happiness may lie in having theories that match one's own personality. · The Naked Man is published by Jonathan Cape (£17.99) on January 3. To order a copy for £16.99 with free UK p&p go to theguardian.com/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875.

Desmond Morris : Naked Ape Human Zoo Desmond Morris Naked Ape : Human Zoo Desmond Morris (Desmond John Morris) author of The Naked Ape and The Human Zoo was born in the village of Purton, near Swindon, Wiltshire, England on January 24th, 1928 as the son of an author of children's fiction and as the great-grandson of William Morris, the pioneering founder of the Swindon Advertiser - Britain's first penny paper - who was also a keen amateur naturalist. During his younger childhood Desmond Morris developed a strong interests in writing and in natural history. As a teenager his interest in natural history developed towards being an interest in Zoology whilst he also became more interested in art. In 1946 he was obliged to put in two years National Service as a military trainee but also functioned as a lecturer in Fine Arts at the Chisledon Army College. He developed sufficient expertise as an artist to warrant his holding a one-man exhibition in Swindon Library. In the autumn of 1948 he enrolled as an undergraduate at the Zoology Department of Birmingham University following his release from National Service.

During his undergraduate course he continued to be involved in painting and became involved in film-making as a writer and director. His paintings were exhibited in London and in Belgium. In 1951 he graduated from Birmingham with first class honours and moved to Oxford to persue doctoral studies in animal behavior. Here he was placed under the tutorship of Dr. Niko Tinbergen. In 1952 he married Ramona Baulch. His studies on the Reproductive Behaviour of the Ten-spined Stickleback (a small freshwater fish) led to his being awarded a doctorate in 1954 and then to post-doctoral research at Oxford Oxford on the reproductive behaviour of birds. From 1956 he became seriously involved in the making of films and television programmes about animal behaviour and began studying the artistic abilities of apes. This was followed by the authorship of a number of natural history books and by the hosting of a popular TV program "Zootime" over several years. In 1959 he was appointed Curator of Mammals at London Zoo.

Between 1959 and 1967 he was responsible for the authorship of quite a few natural history books sometimes in co-authorship with his wife. In 1967 he became a rather more controversial figure in that his authorship strayed into rather more sensitive areas. He was editor of "Primate Ethology" a work which considered recent advances in the study of the behaviours of monkeys and apes, and was author of the international best-seller The Naked Ape which set out to be a frank study of human behavior from a Zoologist's perspective. The early and distinct signs of the financial success of this work which, at the last count, had been translated into 23 languages, selling upwards of 10 million copies, caused him to veer away from continuing in a recent appointment as executive director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and towards relocating to the island of Malta in order to continue to write and to paint. Amongst the many significant works that he wrote in these years are The Human Zoo (1969) and Intimate Behaviour (1971). In 1973 Desmond Morris returned to Oxford as a research fellow at Wolfson College.

In this role it was anticipated that he would work in association with Niko Tinbergen's research group in the Department of Zoology and would continue to research human action-patterns. Over the ensuing years he has maintained his many interests in animal behaviour research, the arts, and in making television programmes and films. The more significant publications in these more recent years include Manwatching, a Field-Guide to Human Behaviour (1977), an Illustrated Naked Ape (1986), Catwatching (1986), Dogwatching (1986), Babywatching (1991), The Human Animal (1994) and Peoplewatching (2002). Notably significant television and film productions in these years include The Human Race (1982), and The Animals Roadshow - a series which he co-presented with Sarah Kennedy and which proved to be widely popular over a three-year run after 1986. In overall terms Desmond Morris has been responsible for the authorship of almost fifty scientific publications. ï¿½ DESMOND MORRIS - BIBLIOGRAPHY Organizes an exhibition of chimpanzee paintings and drawings at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.

1958 Co-organizes 'The Lost Image' exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall, London, comparing pictures by apes, human infants and human adults. First scientific book published: 'The Reproductive Behaviour of the Ten-spined Stickleback'. (Brill, Leiden). Also, first children's book published: 'The Story of Congo'. (Batsford, London.) 1959 After acting as host for Granada TV's weekly 'Zootime' programme for three years, he leaves the TV and Film Unit at the London Zoo, to become the Zoological Society's Curator of Mammals. During the eight years he holds this post, he continues to present television programmes both for Granada and the BBC, scripting and hosting a total of approximately 500 'Zootime' programmes for Granada and 100 'Life in the Animal World' programmes for BBC2. In addition, he takes part in many BBC radio programmes on natural history subjects and is a regular reviewer of animal books for the Times Literary Supplement. He also becomes co-editor of the International Zoo Yearbook for its first four volumes (1959-1962).

1961 Book published: 'Curious Creatures' (Spring Books, London). 1962 Book published: 'The Biology of Art' (Methuen, London), a study of the picturemaking behaviour of the great apes and its relationship to human art. Later editions appeared in The United States, Sweden, France, Germany, Portugal, Japan, Denmark, Mexico, and Hungary. 1964 Children's book published: 'Apes and Monkeys' (Bodley Head, London). Later editions in The United States and Japan. 1965 Reference work published: 'The Mammals, a Guide to the Living Species' (Hodder and Stoughton, London). Also 'Men and Snakes' (Hutchinson, London), with Ramona Morris as co-author. Later editions in The United States and France. Children's book published: 'The Big Cats' (Bodley Head, London). Later editions in The United States, Japan and Holland. 1965 Reference work published: 'The Mammals, a Guide to the Living Species' (Hodder and Stoughton, London).

Also 'Men and Snakes' (Hutchinson, London), with Ramona Morris as co-author. Later editions in The United States and France. 1966 Book published 'Men and Apes' (Hutchinson, London), with Ramona Morris as co-author. Later editions in The United States, France, Germany, Japan and Portugal. Also published: 'Men and Pandas' (Hutchinson, London), with Ramona Morris as co-author. Later editions in The United States and Japan. During this period he establishes an informal research unit at the London Zoo comprising Ph.D. students undertaking doctoral work in animal behaviour and other visiting scientists. 1967 Editor: 'Primate Ethology' (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London), a collection of papers on recent advances in the study of monkeys and apes. Later editions appear in The United States and France. Also published: 'The Naked Ape' (Cape, London), a zoologist's study of the human animal. This is the first of a number of books he produces on the subject of human behaviour.

Later editions of The Naked Ape include: The United States, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Argentina, Portugal, Brazil, Finland, France, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Israel, Japan, Poland, Iceland, Slovak, Czech, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Sinhalese, and Malayalam. In the spring of this year, he resigns his curatorship at London Zoo and becomes the executive director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, with the initial task of seeing the ICA of its old home and into its new, enlarged premises in The Mall. 1968 Following the unexpected success of 'The Naked Ape', he leaves the ICA and moves with his wife to live in Malta where he can concentrate on writing a sequel and return to his own painting activities. He remains in Malta, writing and painting, for the next five years, with occasional visits to his old university at Oxford. Son Jason is born in Malta. 1969 Book published: 'The Human Zoo'(Cape, London), the sequel to 'The Naked Ape', in which he examines the behaviour of city-dwellers.

Later editions in The United States, Japan, Germany, Spain, France, Finland, Turkey, Israel, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iran and Greece. 1970 Collected scientific papers published: 'Patterns of Reproductive Behaviour' (Cape, London). Later edition in the United States. 1971 Book published: 'Intimate Behaviour' (Cape, London), a study of physical contact behaviour among human beings. Later editions in The United States, Japan, Sweden, Portugal, Holland, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Norway, Denmark, Finland. Sets up research headquarters in Malta to undertake ambitious project to produce a comprehensive classification of all human action-patterns, with a view to producing an encyclopedia of human actions 1973 Returns to take up Research Fellowship at Wolfson College and to work again in Niko Tinbergen's animal behaviour research group at the Department of Zoology, Oxford University, continuing his studies of human action-patterns. 1974 Holds one-man-show of Surrealist paintings at Stooshnoff Fine Art Gallery, London, his first exhibition for over 20 years.

1976 Holds four more exhibitions of paintings, following period of intense work in his new Oxford studio: One-man-show at Wolfson College, Oxford; One-man-show at the Quadrangle Gallery, Oxford; One-man-show at the Lasson Gallery, London; and a large retrospective exhibition of 61 works covering 30 years of painting (1946-1976), at the Public Art Gallery in Swindon. 1977 Book published: 'Manwatching, a Field-Guide to Human Behaviour' (Cape, London), a popular presentation of his major investigation into human action-patterns. Later editions in The United States, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Italy, France, Norway, Japan. Is elected to the Board of Directors of Oxford United Football Club. 1978 Holds one-man-show of paintings at the Galerie D'eendt in Amsterdam. Is elected Vice-Chairman of Oxford United Football Club.

1979 Book published: 'Gestures, their Origins and Distribution' (Cape, London)with co-authors Peter Collett, Peter Marsh and Marie O'Shaughnessy, a report on a three-year field research project undertaken for the Harry Frank Guggenheim Research Foundation in New York. The project involved a survey of the gestural similarities and differences of forty locations in twenty-five different countries, across Europe and the Mediterranean. Later editions in The United States, Holland, Japan, Italy, Sweden, Portugal and Israel. Also published: 'Animal Days', a first volume of autobiography, covering the early part of his life up to the end of his curatorship at London Zoo in 1967. Later editions in The United States, France, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Israel and Japan. Undertakes a new television series for Thames TV, London, on the subject of human behaviour, called 'The Human Race', to be filmed in 1980 and 1981 for screening in spring of 1982. 1981 Book published: 'The Soccer Tribe', an analysis of the world of professional football.

Later editions in The United States, Holland, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Spain, and Japan. 1982 Presents the television series 'The Human Race' for Thames TV. Later shown in many other countries. Visits Japan to make a television production called 'Manwatching in Japan', for showing on Japanese TV in autumn 1982. Begins archaeological research for a new book on 'The Art of Ancient Cyprus'. 1983 Novel published: 'Inrock', his first work of fiction, a science fantasy based on the surrealist world portrayed in his paintings. Intended primarily but not exclusively for children. Book published: 'The Book of Ages', a year-by-year survey of human life from birth to death. 1984 Completes work on 'The Art of Ancient Cyprus'. 1985 Book published: 'The Art of Ancient Cyprus'. Also a sequel to 'Manwatching', called 'Bodywatching'. 1986 Books published: an 'Illustrated Naked Ape' edition and two books on pets: 'Catwatching' and 'Dogwatching'. Starts work on a new TV series called 'The Animals Roadshow', co-presented with Sarah Kennedy.

A total of 40 of these programmes are made over the next three years. 1987 Book published: a sequel to 'Catwatching' called 'Catlore'. Also published this year was the first book about his paintings, called 'The Secret Surrealist'. In Scotland he covers the Edinburgh Festival for Japanese Television. In France, the French editions of 'Catwatching' and 'Dogwatching' win the Prix Literaire de 30 Million Amis. 1988 Published: the book of 'The Animals Roadshow' TV series. He also carries out a research project on the colours used in decorating human homes. The results published as a report called 'The Human Nestbuilders'. Also produces another book on animals called 'Horsewatching'. Exhibition of paintings at the Shippee Gallery in New York. Starts filming a new TV series called 'The Animal Contract', for Australian television. Exhibition of paintings in Belgium. 1989 Makes two videos on Dogs and Cats. Completes the final programmes for the 'Animals Roadshow' TV series. Starts work on 'Animalwatching' book. Exhibition of paintings at the Mayor Gallery in London.

1990 Books published: 'The Animal Contract', based on the TV series; and 'Animal-watching', a sequel to 'Manwatching', but dealing with the behaviour of non-human animals. 1991 Book published: 'Babywatching'. Exhibition of paintings at the Mayor Gallery in London to coincide with the publication of Michel Remy's book 'The Surrealist World of Desmond Morris'. Also co-presents 13 TV programmes with Sarah Kennedy for ITV called 'Animal Country'. 1992 Co-presents a second series of 'Animal Country' with Sarah Kennedy. (14 half-hour programmes). Makes a Video of 'Babywatching'. Also makes a set of four videos on 'Body Language'. Holds first one-man-show of paintings in Paris. Book published: 'Christmas Watching'. 1993 Retrospective exhibition of paintings, from 1946 to 1993, at the Public Art Gallery in Swindon. Co-presents a third Series of 'Animal Country' with Sarah Kennedy (13 half-hour programmes). Book published: 'The World of Animals'. 1994 Co-presents a fourth series of 'Animal Country' with Sarah Kennedy.

Exhibition of paintings at the Mayor Gallery in London. Writes and presents 'The Human Animal', a series of six one-hour TV programmes for BBC-1. Books published: 'The Human Animal'; 'The Naked Ape Trilogy'; 'Illustrated Catwatching'; and 'Bodytalk: a World Guide to Gestures'. 1995 Book published: 'Illustrated Babywatching'. "The Human Animal" wins the Cable Ace Award in Los Angeles for best documentary series. Final (fifth) series of 13 'Animal Country' programmes made for ITV with Sarah Kennedy. 1996 Starts work on new TV series, a sequel to 'The Human Animal' called 'The Human Sexes'. Books published: 'The Illustrated Dogwatching' and 'Catworld, a Feline Encyclopedia'. Retrospective exhibition: 'Fifty Years of Surrealism' first at Stoke and then at Nottingham public galleries. 1997 Completes TV series 'The Human Sexes'. Solo exhibition at the Mayor Gallery to coincide with the publication of Silvano Levy's book: Desmond Morris - Fifty Years of Surrealism. Book published: The Human Sexes'. Son Jason marries Annie Reeves. Grand-daughter Matilda is born.

1998 Makes a 37,000 mile journey around the world visiting 21 countries in three months, researching new books and TV series. Solo exhibitions were held in Newcastle, Brussels and Antwerp. Awarded Hon. D.Sc. at Reading University. Book published: The Illustrated Horsewatching. 1999 Three new books published: Cool Cats, the 100 Cat Breeds of the World; Body Guards, Protective Amulets and Charms; The Naked Ape and Cosmetic Behaviour (with co-author Kaori Ishida, in Japanese). Solo exhibitions in Amsterdam and London, and a fourth volume about the paintings: Desmond Morris - Naked Surrealism, by Silvano Levy. 2000 Publication of THE NAKED EYE, Travels in Search of the Human Species. Grand-daughter Madeline is born. 2001 Sets off on another round-the-world trip with his wife, visiting 23 different countries. Publication of DOGS; THE ULTIMATE DICTIONARY OF OVER 1000 DOG BREEDS. Exhibition of paintings at the Galerie Pack-Huys in Mechelen, Belgium.

Publication of the CATALOGUE RAISONNE, by Silvano Levy , of the paintings of Desmond Morris, with over 1300 colour plates. 2002 Holds exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Ostend, Belgium, at the Mayor Gallery in London and at the Art Consultancy Witteveen, Amsterdam. Publication of PEOPLEWATCHING, a revised, updated and enlarged version of his 1977 book MANWATCHING. 2003 Makes a three-month journey around the world, visiting the Caribbean, Central America, North America, South Pacific, Australasia, the Far East, Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. Grand-daughter Annabelle is born. Exhibition of paintings at Solomon Gallery, Dublin. 2004 Three new books published: 'The Silent Language' (in Italian), 'The Naked Woman; a study of the female body', and 'The Nature of Happiness'. Holds solo exhibition of paintings at the Mayor Gallery in London. Grandson Evan is born. 2005 Holds solo exhibitions of paintings in Amsterdam, Madrid and Stratford-upon-Avon.

Also organizes an exhibition of paintings by great apes - 'Ape Artists of the 1950s' - at the Mayor Gallery in London. 2006 Makes a three-month journey around the world, visiting the Middle East, Asia, the Far East, Australia and Africa. Publication of a volume of memoirs: WATCHING; Encounters with Humans and Other Animals. Exhibition of paintings at Galerie Pack-Huys in Mechelen, Belgium. 2007 Makes another three-month journey around the world, visiting South America, the Pacific, Australasia, the Far East, USA, Mexico and the Caribbean. Further travels in the summer to Spain, Italy, Croatia and Greece. Publication of THE NAKED MAN; a Study of the Male Body, a sequel to THE NAKED WOMAN of 2004; also a tract DARK INSIDE MY HEAD, published as Surrealist Bulletin No. 2. Exhibition of paintings at the Said Business School in Oxford and at the Taurus Gallery, also in Oxford. 2008 Exhibition of paintings at the Mayor Gallery in London: ‘80th Birthday Retrospective.’ Completes a study of 'The Art of the Kuna'.

Travels in the summer to Spain, Gibraltar, France and Italy. New book published: BABY, the amazing story of the first two years of life. Retrospective exhibition of 130 paintings at the Williamson Art gallery in Birkenhead, with accompanying book by Silvano Levy called 'Lines of Thought; The Drawings of Desmond Morris'. Further exhibitions at the Witteveen Gallery in Amsterdam and the Taurus Gallery in Oxford. 2009 Paperback edition of THE NAKED MAN is published. Makes another three-month journey around the world, visiting the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Asia, the Far East, Australasia, and the South Pacific. In the Summer visits St Petersberg and the Baltic ports. Two new books published: PLANET APE and OWL. Exhibition of paintings at the Taurus Gallery in Oxford. 2010 Exhibition of collages at the Verbeke Foundation in Belgium. Makes another three-month journey around the world, visiting the Carribean, the South Pacific, Australasia, the Far East, Asia, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. In the Summer visits Iceland and Greenland to study Eskimo art. Annual exhibition of paintings at the Taurus Gallery in Oxford.

The sequel to his book BABY is published. Called CHILD; HOW CHILDREN THINK, LEARN AND GROW IN THE EARLY YEARS, it examines the behaviour of the pre-school child. 2011 Makes a trip to Alaska to study the Northwest Indian and Eskimo arts. In the Summer visits Venice and the Western Mediterranean. Annual exhibition of paintings at the Taurus Gallery in Oxford. 2012 The second volume of Silvano Levy's CATALOGUE RAISONNE of Desmond Morris' paintings is published, covering the period from 2000 to 2012. All the 900 works produced during this period are illustrated in colour. In the summer visitS Spain, Venice, Croatia, Corfu, and Portugal. In December, the Taurus Gallery in Oxford holds its annual Christmas show of his work. 2013 Three book are published in this year. The first is MONKEY in the Reaktion Book ANIMAL series. The second is a new edition of his surrealist fantasy INROCK, this time with illustrations by the author. (Dark Windows Press) The third is a study of the evolution of human art.

Called THE ARTISTIC APE; THREE MILLION YEARS OF ART, (Red Lemon Press) it sets out to answer why it is that the human species has been so intensely creative for thousands of years. As before, In December, the Taurus Gallery in Oxford holds its annual Christmas show of his paintings. 2014 Two books are published in this year. The first is another volume in the Reaktion Book ANIMAL series, this one called LEOPARD. The second, called HEADWORKS (Dark Windows Press) is a volume of his collected poems from 1945 to 2014, accompanied by illustrations of his recent paintings. This book is launched with an exhibition of the paintings it illustrates, at the Taurus Gallery in the spring. SwindonWeb - Swindon accommodation, jobs and hotels in Swindon, news, property, business, what's on, eating out, shopping and Swindon Town football club Swindon's celebrated zoologist, artist and broadcaster Desmond Morris D Phil is Swindon's most famous son.

Actually born just outside the town, in the village of Purton, on 24th January, 1928, he is world renowned as an author of books on animal and human behaviour, but is also a highly-respected broadcaster, a celebrated artist and a revered academic. His book, The Naked Ape, first published in 1967, was a worldwide bestseller and at the last count had been translated into 23 languages, selling upwards of 10 million. Writing and books are in Desmond Morris's blood. His father, Harry Morris, was an author of children's fiction, but the literary link goes back several more generations. Desmond's great grandfather was William Morris, a pioneering publisher who founded the Swindon Advertiser (now the Evening Advertiser) in 1854, Britain's first penny paper. William Morris was an important influence on Desmond's life. The family moved to Swindon when Desmond was five-years-old and he inherited from his great grandfather not only a microscope and strange scientific specimens he found in the family attic, but also the curiosity of a naturalist.

As a schoolboy, Desmond spent days observing the wildlife in and around the lake in Swindon's Queen's Park, which was then owned by his grandmother. "It seemed amazing to me," he wrote in his autobiographical book, Animal Days, "that people who raved about the Wiltshire countryside were unaware of this other, equally fascinating landscape of microscopic shapes and organisms." Desmond's interest was encouraged and developed at Dauntsey's School at West Lavington and an article for the school's Natural History Magazine, called Toad in the Hole, became the first of many published works. Back at the family home in Victoria Road, Desmond knew the young Diana Dors - "my teenage crush" the future film star later called it - but soon he found himself doing national service at Tidworth before moving on to an army college in Chiseldon where he taught another of his passions, art. "At nineteen," he later recalled, "there are so many directions to take." His dilemma was which road to take. Despite a growing reputation as a surrealist artist and his first one-man show - at Swindon Library - Desmond Morris renewed his love affair with the natural world by becoming a student of zoology at Birmingham University.

A decision to channel his energies into his studies led to a first class degree and then a research post at Oxford, where he was to obtain a doctorate following his studies of the ten-spined stickleback. His published paper on his findings was to be the first of (so far) 47 scientific works. But his art had not been abandoned and a shared exhibition with the renowned surrealist painter Joan Miro in London in 1950 confirmed his place as a noted modern artist. (See his picture, left, entitled "The Parade of Memories"). The Fifties were a happy time for Desmond who married Ramona Baulch, a girl originally from Marlborough (they celebrated their 45th anniversary in 1997). By 1956 Desmond had established himself as one of the country's foremost zoologists, but his career was about to take a new direction. Granada TV set up a film unit at London Zoo with the plan of making natural history films to compete with the BBC and Desmond was chosen to head the project. He was about to become a TV star.

Desmond appeared in around 500 episodes of Zootime for Granada and 100 Life in the Animal World programmes for the BBC, but his new-found fame as a broadcaster was, true-to-form, only one aspect of his career. For eight years he was Curator of Mammals for the Zoological Society, was a regular reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and co-edited the International Zoo Yearbook. But, as the Sixties dawned, it was his own books that were taking precedence. By 1967, Desmond Morris had become one of the world's leading authorities on animal behaviour, but even by his standards, the impact made by his new book, The Naked Ape, was to be spectacular. For the first time, he switched his attentions to the human animal with a frank and highly readable book that was as controversial as it was successful. Some copies were bought by Christians so that they could burn them in protest at Desmond's outrageous book which reduced the human species to the status of just another animal and spoke of sexuality without inhibition. Its success may have surprised even the author, but The Naked Ape was an almost immediate bestseller.

Still he found it impossible to neglect his art, becoming an executive director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, but removing to Malta to write the sequel to the Naked Ape, called The Human Zoo. Now firmly established in four fields - broadcaster, artist, author and academic - Desmond may have appeared to have reached the peak of his career - but his international reputation was to be enhanced still further in the following twenty years. In television, The Animals Roadshow - a total of 41 35-minute programmes for the BBC which he co-presented with Sarah Kennedy - is perhaps the best-remembered of a continuing string of credits for channels both at home and abroad. At the same time, exhibitions in London, Oxford, Amsterdam, Paris, New York, Sydney, Valencia and even Swindon maintained his status as a painter. And he remained a virtual ever-present in the bestseller lists whether he chose to write about human behaviour or returned to his first love to chronicle the world of animals. Desmond Morris is rapidly approaching his 70th birthday, but is fortunately showing no signs of retiring. His latest book, Illustrated Horsewatching, will be published in 1998.

Although he now lives in Oxford, the natural habitat of the academic zoologist, Desmond seems genuinely proud of his Swindon roots, as we are genuinely proud of him. A man of remarkable success in so many fields, Desmond Morris has, nevertheless, retained an accessibility and affability that many other lesser people have long since lost. Perhaps there you will find the secret of his success.

Bibliography and TV credits The World of Animals (1956) Zootime [Granada, approximately 500 episodes] (1956-67) The Reproductive Behaviour of the Ten-Spined Stickleback (1958) The Story of Congo (1958) Introducing Curious Creatures (1961) The Biology of Art (1962) The Animal Story [Granada] (1962) Apes and Monkeys (1964) The Mammals: A guide to the Living Species (1965) Series on animal behavious [BBC Schools Television] (1965) Zoo Challenge [BBC] (1965) Life in the Animal World [BBC, 52 episodes] (1965) Men and Snakes (with Ramona Morris) (1965) Men and Apes (with Ramona Morris) (1966) Men and Pandas (with Ramona Morris) (1962) Zootime (1966) Man of the Decade [ATV] (1969) The Human Zoo (19

69) Patterns of Reproductive Behaviour (1970) Intimate Behaviour (1971) Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behaviour (1977) Manwatching [BBC] (1977) Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution [with Peter Collett, Peter Marsh and Marie O'Shaughnessy] (1979) Animals Days (1979) Friday Night and Saturday Morning [BBC] (1980 and 1981) The Soccer Tribe (1981) The Giant Panda [with Ramona Morris and Jonathan Barzdo] (1981) The Human Race [Thames] (1982) The Manwatcher in Japan [for Japenese TV] (1982) Inrock (1983) The [BOOK] of Ages (1983) The Art of Ancient Cyprus (1985) Bodywatching: A Field Guide to the Human Species (1985) The Illustrated Naked Ape (1986) TV and Natural History [BBC] (1986) Catwatching (1986) The Soccer Tribe

 [Danish TV] (1986) Dogwatching (1986) The Animals Roadshow [BBC] (1987-89) Catlore (1987) Wolf in Your Living Room [BBC] (1987) The Animals Roadshow (1988) Tiger on the Tiles [BBC] (1988) Beasts of the Field [BBC] (1989) The Animal Contract (1990) Art World [Independent Image TV] (1990) The Animal Contract [Lifetime Pictures/Garner-MacLellan] (1990) Babywatching (1991) The Zebra in Your Stable [BBC] (1991) Animal Country [Mike Mansfield TV for ITV] (1991-96) Christmas Watching (1992) The World of Animals (1993) The Naked Ape Trilogy (1994) The Human Animal [BBC] (1994) The Human Animal (1994) Bodytalk: A World Guide to Gestures (1994) Illustrated Babywatching (1995) Cat

world: A Feline Encyclopedia (1996) The Human Sexes [The Learning Channel] (1997) The Human Sexes: A Natural History of Man and Woman (1997) Illustrated Horsewatching [in print] (1998) RELATED CATEGORIES Scientists' Nightstand: Desmond Morris » American Scientist Scientists' Nightstand HOME > SCIENTISTS' NIGHTSTAND > Scientists' Nightstand Detail SCIENTISTS' NIGHTSTAND Author and ethologist Desmond Morris studies animal and human behavior from a zoological perspective.

His most recent book is The Naked Woman: A Study of the Female Body (Thomas Dunne, 2005). Could you tell us a bit about yourself? As a child growing up during World War II, I was so appalled by the behavior of human adults that I turned my attention to the study of other speciesâalso because I was obsessed with observing wildlife. This led to a zoological career analyzing animal behavior, culminating in a book about the human animal called The Naked Ape (McGraw-Hill, 1967), in which I wrote about humans in the same way that I had done in my research with fish, birds and mammals. I then went on to make a study of human body language and wrote a number of books on the subject, including Intimate Behaviour (Cape, 1971), Manwatching (Cape, 1977), Bodywatching (Crown, 1985), Bodytalk (Cape, 1994), The Human Animal (Crown, 1994), The Human Sexes (St. Martin's Press, 1998), The Naked Woman and The Naked Man (forthcoming).

What books are you currently reading (or have you just finished reading) for your work or for pleasure? Why did you choose them, and what do you think of them? I have been reading Clive Bromhall, The Eternal Child (Ebury, 2003). Like me, the author is a zoologist who has studied the human animal, and his book gives the best explanation of differences in human sexual preferences that I have come across so far. I have also been reading Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), a book that clearly shows how impossible it is to reconcile science with the institutionalized superstitions that we refer to as religion. When and where do you usually read (specific location, time of day, etc.)? At the table in my Oxford library, between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m., when my brain is most active. Having a large personal library is one of my greatest luxuries. Who are your favorite writers (fiction, nonfiction or poetry)? Why? In each of those categories there has been one special book for me: Fiction: Voltaire's Candide (1759).

Because I am by nature an optimist. Nonfiction: Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). Because it buried religion. Poetry: W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood's The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935). Because, as a teenager, it fired my imagination. What are the three best books you've ever read? Explain. Among scientific books: John Bulwer, A View of the People of the Whole World (1654). Because it was the first serious attempt at comparative anthropology, with illustrations showing the various tribal modifications of the human body. Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Because of the way that Darwin attempted to analyze human body language and relate it to the actions of other animals. Niko Tinbergen, The Study of Instinct (1951). Because it introduced me to the then-new subject of comparative ethology and showed me how field studies of animal behavior could be conducted in a quantifiable, scientific manner. What book has influenced you most? Explain how.

Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and Clyde Martin, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948). This was the first modern scientific study of the human species by a zoologist, and despite its shortcomings it remains a classic. As a young zoologist myself I was stunned by the daring of the project, and Kinsey's idea of approaching human beings objectively as animals remained with me for many years, until eventually I summoned up the courage to write The Naked Ape. Name three books you want to read but haven't gotten to yet. Three? There are literally hundreds of books in my library that are still looking at me accusingly from the shelves, demanding to be read. Unfortunately, I buy books faster than I can read them all. Then I get immersed in writing another book myself. But one day ... What book recommendations do you have for young readers? For any young zoologist I would recommend Konrad Lorenz, King Solomon's Ring (1952). This will reveal just how much one can learn simply by sitting and watching animal behavior. What science book recommendations do you have for nonscientists? Speaking as a zoologist: First, something that stimulates a sense of wonder at the natural world.

For this, any of David Attenborough's natural histories, from Life on Earth (Little, Brown, 1979) to Life in the Undergrowth (Princeton University Press, 2005). Then, once this has been achieved, something that demonstrates the keystone of scientific researchâthe concept of the testable hypothesis. Aubrey Manning's book An Introduction to Animal Behaviour (Addison-Wesley, 1967), which has appeared in many editions over the years, is one of the best ways to approach the subject. It is clearly written and has been kept up to date with the later developments in the field. Name one book in your discipline that you would recommend for scientists outside your field. Explain your choice. Aubrey Manning's book, as above.

Question: The controversial book "The Naked Ape" appeared in 1967. Who was the author ?
Answer: DESMOND MORRIS