Solly Zuckerman

Environmentalist, zoologist and Whitehall mandarin, Solly Zuckerman became one of the Allied leaders' most influential advisors during the war, and later the British government's chief scientific advisor. He was among the first to warn against the nuclear arms race, and of the threat posed to the climate by population growth.

Born in South Africa, Zuckerman published a bestseller on the social life of primates while a researcher at London Zoo. A friend of Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and many in the Bloomsbury Set, in New York he partied with Dorothy Parker, George Gerschwin and Tallulah Bankhead. At the peak of his influence in the 1960s and '70s, Zuckerman was secretary of London Zoo, professor of anatomy at Birmingham University and an all-powerful mandarin in Whitehall.

Written with exclusive access to the subject's private papers, Adrian Fort's new biography portrays a remarkable polymath who sat at the heart of political life for over forty years.