Wonderful call of the wild

WHEN Helen Macdonald was growing up, she found herself in an environment rich with peculiarity. The “little white house” in which she lived with her parents was situated behind a motorway in Camberley, Surrey, on “a 50-acre walled estate owned by the Theosophical Society”.

Her parents had no interest in Theosophy. But they liked the house and the estate, and were attracted, one suspects, by many of their fellow residents — Theosophy having been banned in Nazi Germany — being refugees. Those who were not refugees tended to be outsiders