Liverpool Literary Festival presents: Desmond Morris and Robert Page

Join us for an engaging conversation as Zoologist and best-selling author Desmond Morris talks with TV and film director, Robert Page about his literary work.

Zoologist and socio-biologist Desmond Morris is one of the most prolific authors of modern times, writing over 50 best-selling books in a career spanning over 70 years. He is probably best known for The Naked Ape and The Human Zoo, two books which transformed our understanding of humanity as a species. The Naked Ape sold some 20 million copies and was translated into 23 languages. In academic life, Morris completed a PhD at the University of Oxford on the reproductive behaviour of the ten-spined stickleback. For those who grew up in the 50s and 60s, Desmond was the face of TV’s Zoo Time and Animal Story, which brought natural history into millions of living rooms and delighted adults and children alike. In addition to his scientific and TV career, Morris is also a surrealist painter. He had a two-person exhibition with Joan Miró in 1950, directed Surrealist short films and even organised a successful exhibition of paintings created by chimpanzees.

Robert Page MA is an award-winning TV producer and founder and CEO of the media group Lifetime Productions International. He is also an alumnus of English Literature from the University of Liverpool. In a high-profile career that has spanned both Australia and the UK, producing many how-to videos, Page has worked with household names such as Alan Titchmarsh and Prue Leith. It was as part of his Virgin Videobook series that he first worked with Desmond Morris, on the programme Catwatching. This was the start of a relationship which saw Page produce the TV mini-series, The Animal Contract, with Morris. Page has also produced many TV series including Go Wild! with Chris Packham. In 1991, he created The Lovers' Guide, the first adult sex education documentary in the UK to be granted an 18 certificate by the British Board of Film Classification and so the first such documentary available in high street stores. Since then, Page has supervised its growth into a library of twelve videos and DVDs. The original Lovers’ Guide sold 1.3 million copies, in 20 countries around the world, and was the first documentary to reach number one in the video charts.