Steve Waters - Saving the Blue

The Large Blue was always a magnificent and rare creature but, by the early 1970s, it was very nearly extinct.

That was when Professor Jeremy Thomas, then a PHD student, was tasked with saving this iconic butterfly. And yet their numbers were critically low even as he began.

Throughout the rest of the 1970s, he spent the summer months out in the field, at a secret location on Dartmoor, attempting to discover the reason for their decline and, if possible, to reverse it. As the population dwindled away, the professor became locked in an increasingly desperate race against time.

This ground breaking work has been enormously influential on conservation practice to this day, having profound consequences for other butterflies and for wider conservation practice. What started as one man, on his own, on the moors, has grown into a group of individuals and agencies whose ongoing work remains vitally important.

Steve Waters, inspired by this work, has invented the characters and settings in this delicate and essential drama.

Michael Pennington and Joshua McGuire star as Professor Jeremy Thomas.

Older Jeremy ...... Michael Pennington
Younger Jeremy ...... Josh McGuire
Marston ...... Anton Lesser
Gough ...... Paul Copley
Caro ...... Hannah Steele
Johnny ...... Tim Chipping

Sound Design by Alisdair McGregor
Assistant Producer Robbie MacInnes
Director: Boz Temple-Morris

A Holy Mountain production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in December 2017.