Kenneth Allsop was a writer, journalist and broadcaster who in the
1960s and early 70s became one of Britain's first television
celebrities. Voted the 'fifth most handsome man in the world', he
enjoyed the high life of fast cars, jazz and smart London parties,
moving among the nation's glitterati from the arts, media and
politics. But he was also an accomplished naturalist and a
passionate conservationist who fought fiercely to hold back
mounting threats to Britain's wildlife and landscapes. He played a
key role in raising the public's concern for the environment long
before the advent of the UK's now-powerful green movement. Keeping
the Barbarians at Bay focuses on the last few years of Allsop's
short life, when he escaped London to live in a seventeenth-
century watermill in the secret, crumpled landscape of West Dorset.
The book describes how the threat of oil and gas exploration in
this protected area of outstanding natural beauty forced him to
become an environmental activist, and how his grassroots
campaigning led him to the BBC's first environmentalist TV series
Down to Earth, and to a radical 'green' column in The Sunday Times.
Not surprisingly, he made powerful enemies in government and big
business, at a time when there were few other environmental
champions to lend him support. Using his unpublished diaries and
papers, Keeping the Barbarians at Bay reveals the inside story of
Allsop's struggles on three fronts: with 'the barbarians'; with the
constant physical pain from his amputated right leg; and with his
despair at the huge environmental challenges facing the planet. In
the end, they were battles he could not win, and in May 1973 he
took his own life at the tragically early age of 53.
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