I first met James Lovelock at the National Portrait Gallery in London, which had commissioned me to paint his portrait. Jim was with his wife, Sandy, and greeted me with the smile that became so familiar.
In the beautiful early summer of 2010, I travelled to Coombe Mill, his home in Devon, to start the portrait. Jim’s conversation was filled with reminiscences, science, anecdotes and uproarious laughter.
He insisted on only two things: that I shouldn’t make him look like a serious old scientist and that I include the logo of the South West Coast Path on his sweatshirt. He and Sandy had walked the path and he said he considered that to be one of his greatest achievements.
The portrait was unveiled in 2012, on the day he and Sandy were moving from Devon to their beautiful coastguard’s cottage on the Dorset coast, a stone’s throw from Chesil beach.
For a flavour of an hour in his company, simply dip into his autobiography Homage to Gaia (2000) and hear his voice.
Michael Gaskell
My aunt, Louise Jennings, told me that in 1942 James Lovelock, with whom she had a brief relationship – she always called him “Jimmy” – took her to see the film Bambi. I sometimes wonder what the influence on him of seeing it might have been.
Philip Heselton
