Talk: Will Millard - The Old Man and the Sand Eel

Will Millard is a British writer, jungle explorer and BBC presenter. He spent his twenties criss-crossing the forests of remotest West Papua in search of ancient tribal trade routes, before his solo descent of a West African river, and subsequent survival from cerebral malaria, was made into an acclaimed series for BBC Radio 4. Last year he lived alongside Aboriginal whale harpooners as part of his television series Hunters of the South Seas for BBC Two. He writes regularly for Geographical, Outdoor Fitness, the Daily Telegraph and Vice magazine.
 
Growing up on the Cambridgeshire Fens, Will Millard never felt more at home than when he was out with his granddad on the riverbank whiling away the day catching fish. As he grew older his competitive urge to catch more and bigger fish led him away from that natural connection between him, his grandfather and the rivers of his home and into large commercial fisheries catching fish after fish. That is, until the fateful day he let a record-breaking sand eel slip through his fingers and he knew that he had lost the magic of those days down by the river, and that something had to change. Armed with his late grandfather's well-thumbed fishing encyclopaedia Will set out on a quest to get back to his roots and catch some of our great forgotten fish species, hidden deep in our lost waterways.
 
The Old Man and the Sand Eel is at its heart the story of three generations of men trying to figure out what it is to be a man, a father and a fisherman. It plots Will's scaly stepping stones back to his childhood innocence and late granddad, and a return to the importance of understanding the truly feral through a child's eyes, when anything was possible and the wild was everywhere.

Talk presented by the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in association with King's Lynn Festival