Hallam's family's bookcases

"The first image is a very poor-quality scan of a print showing my late father, Charles 'Bud' Payne, a self-described 'steam-age horticulturalist' in his office in the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe with an unnamed colleague, and roughly one third of his library on deciduous fruit. It also clearly illustrates the pack-rat gene common to many of the male members of my family."

"The second shows him in front of about one-fifth of his and my mother's general non-fiction collection. He was an amateur archaeologist, among many other things, and she a professional ornithologist and later a high-school biology teacher. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of his extensive (around fifteen metres of shelf length) fiction collection, which included a great deal of Penguin paperbacks, hence the Christmas present from my sister. The shelves are homemade and rather utilitarian, but travelled with my father through three successive households

Further images of family members with the pack-rat gene (and one rather hidden bookshelf, or rather bookpile), are in an article written by my brother Brett, the historian of my generation, in his vintage photography blog."