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Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Monday, December 20, 2010

LINDSAY SELBY: Tony Harmsworth's new Loch Ness book

I bought Tony’s new book through his website : http://www.loch-ness.org/

Loch Ness, Nessie and Me arrived within a couple of days of my ordering it, signed by the author ,with a sticker saying limited edition 10 of a 100 and a nice postcard of the tour sites around Loch Ness (makes a useful bookmark) .It will make a nice present for anyone who is interested in the Loch Ness Story.

It contains some history of the Loch and a nice tour of the Loch ,so if you have never been or are planning a visit ,you will find this interesting. I enjoyed it and I have been there loads of times.

The book is written in an easy style and different aspects of it are interspersed so you will get a bit about Tony’s life around the Loch and then a chapter on the Nessie. I have to admit my personal preference would have been to have 3 separate sections. The history and tour and then either Tony’s story and the monster hunting stories and analysis ,rather than go from one topic to another, but that is just me.

The front cover claims “The Truth Revealed” but apart from Tony’s story of his life around the Loch , there was nothing new I hadn’t read before. There is the analysis of Tim Dinsdale’s film saying it is a boat(Apparently you can do this yourself by taking photos of the film being shown on a TV programme. However I do wonder if showing the film , an old cine film, on a modern TV network ,wouldn’t distort it in some way? Wouldn’t it have to be altered to show on the TV? I don’t know and will leave you to think about that when you read the book. )Robert Rines photos are analysed ,but no new revelations, the usual tree stump and folded polythene argument. The only qualm I have with this ,as all evidence should be open to scrutiny and analysis, is that neither men are around to defend their work and therefore cannot explain how they came to their conclusions and argue back .So this makes the analysis one sided and I think everyone should read different points of view and make their own minds up and not be swayed by just one view point. There is also , of course, Tony’s encounters with Frank Searle, who if nothing else was a real character and whatever you may think after reading Tony’s book, it still makes me smile every time I hear his name. The locals had a soft spot for him so he must have had some good characteristics, but I just saw him as some sort of showman with a bad temper.It is amazing how fast people could run when they suggested to Frank his photos weren’t genuine. lol

Tony says he believes there is something in the Loch but more likely to be a big fish, which is fair enough, I think most people would agree it is not some remnant prehistoric beast.

I enjoyed the book ,read it in one afternoon ,and if nothing else I have learned from Tony, always get things in writing. There are lots of black and white illustrations , some that you may not have seen before and yes it is a worthwhile read but keep an open mind.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The big fish in question WOULD BE a "Remnant prehistoric beast"

And people who go about making prejudicial comments of this type frequently trip themselves by saying such things. So it does not matter if "The majority of Cryptozoologists would agree that Nessie is not a prehistoric animal" when such people do not even realise that the big fish they advocate actually is of a lineage as old as the dinosaurs. It might make them feel good and generate feelings of comeraderie, but it is NOT any kind of a scientific statement.

Hi, Lindsay, good to hear from you again. And always remember, people going around spouting any sort of mottoes are NOT people that bother to invest any energy actually THINKING about things. It is a form of mental laziness and using such repetitive mottoes is a typical brainwashing tactic employed by questionable political organizations and religious cults.