15 Facts About George Cansdale

George Soper Cansdale was a British zoologist, writer and television personality.

George Cansdale was Superintendent of the Zoological Society of London, and one of the best-known presenters of wildlife programmes and items on British television between the 1950s and 1980s.

George Cansdale was born in 1909 in Brentwood, Essex and attended Brentwood School before studying for a degree in forestry at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.

George Cansdale then joined the Colonial Service, and in 1934 was appointed as Forestry Officer for the Gold Coast, where he started collecting animals for a friend who worked at Paignton Zoo.

George Cansdale used local children to help him collect specimens, and as a result discovered several new species.

George Cansdale began supplying animals for several zoos, including London Zoo.

George Cansdale made regular appearances on Children's Hour on BBC radio.

George Cansdale developed, with his son, a method of obtaining clean seawater by filtering it through beach sand, and set up a company, SWF Filtration Ltd, which won the international IBM Award for Sustainable Development in 1990.

George Cansdale's books included Animals of West Africa, Animals and Man, George Cansdale's Zoo Book, Belinda the Bushbaby, Reptiles of West Africa, The Ladybird Book of British Wild Animals, West African Snakes, Behind the Scenes at a Zoo and Animals of Bible Lands.

George Cansdale married Margaret Williamson, who had been a fellow student at Oxford, in 1940.

George Cansdale was Churchwarden of All Souls Church, Langham Place, from 1950 to 1971, and President of the evangelical Crusaders Union.

George Cansdale died in Great Chesterford, Essex in 1993 at the age of 83.

George Cansdale had a well-documented falling out with Gerald Durrell, which resulted in the latter being "black-balled" from a number of zoos.

George Cansdale featured on the BBC Home Service's Desert Island Discs in January 1957.

George Cansdale's luxury item was a pair of field glasses.