My Friends the Animals by Dick Chipperfield

196 Pages, Hardcover

22cm x 14cm

FIRST EDITION 1963

What do you do with a gorilla with toothache? What do you do with a giraffe at one o'clock in the morning, at the height of a storm, in the middle of the English countryside? What do you do with a gentle bear weighing seven hundredweight, who hates pantomime horses? These are a handful of the daily problems faced and solved by Dick Chipperfield, the world's greatest animal handler.

The author emerges as a true original, who tells his tale with engaging modesty and with flashes of great humour.

"It is morning in the circus. In the centre of the black-grit recreation ground, down by the canal, stands the Big Top, its red and blue pennants fluttering from the four blue king-poles. The canvas, grey from the smoke of the industrial Midlands through which we are passing, billows in a wind that is almost certainly blowing up more rain. In the distance, across the wasteland and the allotments, are the smoking factory chimneys, the church spires, the concrete cooling towers and the homes of our audiences. In front of the Big Top stands the red and blue box office and the gaily painted show-front depicting the Bengal tigers, the forest-bred lionesses, the Himalayan bears and the crocodiles. Like all show-painting, this is a special form of art, designed to be seen and appreciated from a range of 50 yards by an undiscerning public rather than with the closer eye of the critic." From the Introduction.