We’re excited to be giving away two copies of Stoatally Fascinated by Carolyn King to our GrownUps members!
To be in the draw, simply make sure you’re a GrownUps member, signed up to our newsletter, and fill in your details at the bottom of the page.
About Stoatally Fascinated
Trenchant criticism from a childhood teacher removed any ambition from Carolyn King’s mind and almost led her to join the Women’s Royal Navy Service as a lorry driver. Instead, with the help of good teachers and supervisors, as a newbie grad student in 1967 she began studying weasels with absolutely no idea of what she was letting herself in for. In this memoir, a companion volume to her book Stoat in the Dock: The ecology and management of invasive mustelids in New Zealand (Springer Nature, 2025), King offers the inside story of a lifetime’s determined efforts to understand the ecology of weasels as elusive native carnivores in England, and stoats and ferrets as invasive pests in New Zealand, introduced to stem the tide of pasture-eating rabbits.
King shares her conviction that ordinary diligence and conscious gratitude for help are, in the long run, more important than a fizzing intellect in enabling a modest but deeply fulfilling career in research. She expresses her gratitude for the many ‘angels in disguise’ whom she met at critical moments, often resulting in significant turning points in her life, and shares her remarkable story in the hope that others may be inspired to push through the barriers that life presents. Throughout, she expresses gratitude for the privilege of spending her entire professional life doing the only sort of work she ever wanted to do.
This fascinating memoir has a timely conservation/environment focus, and the author has wide name recognition in the conservation space.
About the Author
Professor Emerita Carolyn King was born and raised in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Once referred to as ‘the most unsatisfactory pupil the school has ever had’, with the dedicated support of two older sisters and many understanding teachers she went on to gain a BSc at Liverpool University, followed by a doctorate at Oxford on the field ecology of native weasels.
A life-changing offer in 1971 took her to New Zealand to a professional appointment as mustelid specialist for DSIR Ecology Division. More than five decades later, Carolyn can look back on an entire professional life focused on trying to understand the extraordinary lives of weasels and stoats, both as native species in England and as damaging invasive predators in New Zealand. In the process, she has published a number of books, won two prestigious awards and become a Fellow of the Royal Society New Zealand.
She has dedicated over fifty years to many research projects on stoats and their prey, driven by a lifelong fascination with these beautiful but frequently misunderstood animals.
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You must be a GrownUps member and subscribed to our newsletter to be eligible to enter.
The competition closes on 27th May 2026. Winners will be notified via email by 28th May 2026.
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