A barrister has been living as a badger, eating worms and shuffling about on all fours.
Charles Foster, a medical law barrister at Serjeants’ Inn Chambers and a tutor in Medical Law and Ethics at Oxford University, is the author of numerous legal articles, including ‘Law, Freedom and Religious Principle in England’ and ‘Civil procedure, trial issues and clinical guidelines’.
However, he is also an author of many non-law-related books and it was for one of these, the newly-published Being a Beast, that he and his eight-year-old son spent six weeks living as a badger.
Foster also spent time living as an urban fox, a swift, a deer and an otter.
The book is described as “an intimate look at the life of animals, neuroscience, psychology, nature writing, memoir and more, it is a journey of extraordinary thrills and surprises, containing wonderful moments of humour and joy, but also providing important lessons for all of us who share life on this precious planet.”
It has already gained a glowing review from The Guardian, which described it as a “magnificent account of one man’s bid to live as five animals which reveals what makes us human.”
On the basic level of media coverage of his experience, Foster commented to The New Statesman: “I have become The Man Who Eats Worms. It’s not really a very interesting subject. It doesn’t tell you anything about how badgers experience the world.”
One presumes that the switch from barrister to badger was not an onerous one, as both live in sets.
