To stand on these intoxicatingly unspoiled dunes and look east across the water to the ‘millionaire’s paradise’ known as Sandbanks is effectively to look into an alternative future, one that Captain Diver saw coming and – hooray for wildlife - averted.
Preserving wilderness from house building
His passion for the natural world, which began with the gentle study of snails as a diversion from the horrors of the trenches in the First World War, allowed him to see what others in the 1930s were missing. Our wilderness was in danger of becoming one big housing estate. The countryside had an enemy – town planning.
Going on to lay the foundations of Britain’s wildlife legislation, devising and heading up The Nature Conservancy and ultimately preserving many beautiful natural spaces, Captain Diver’s first battle began on a much smaller scale.