Sir Peter Scott

The eminent conservationist's love for wildfowl and the wetlands they depend on began on the marsh with gun in hand, says Sir Johnny Scott

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THE RENOWNED wildlife artist, author, international competitor in skating, sailing and gliding, wildfowler and broadcaster Sir Peter Scott became the father of modern conservation, founding the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust in 1946. He was born in 1909, the only child of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the celebrated polar explorer, and his wife, the artist and socialite Kathleen Bruce. Scott never knew his father, who left when he was only a few months old on the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole in 1910, perishing two years later. A last letter from the Antarctic encouraged his wife to ‘make the boy interested in natural history’ and Scott's early mentors included Sir Ray Lankester, former director of the Natural History Museum, and his two godfathers: JM Barrie, author of Peter Pan, and Sir Clements Markham, past president of the Royal Geographical Society, who had supported his father’s polar expeditions.

First forays

Scott grew up in London, where his mother and stepfather Hilton Young (later Lord Kennet) were members of the Bloomsbury Group. His first real encounter with the natural world was as an undergraduate at Cambridge in 1927, when he was invited to spend a day shooting on the Ouse Washes. Drawn to the mystique of the saltmarshes, Scott developed a growing passion for wildfowling and punt-gunning. After leaving Cambridge in 1930, he studied fine art for several months at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, followed by two years at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, before renting the East Bank lighthouse at the mouth of the River Nene. This he used as a base to write and paint, as well as for wildfowling forays in the Wash.