PRESS
Morris was a master of provocative truths. He enjoyed generating pseudo-scandal by extrapolating from known scientific facts towards possible implications in realms which were difficult to stomach even in the Swinging Sixties. He put forward the idea, for example, that women’s lips emphasised with rouge were a form of signalling mimicry of genitalia – the ‘naked ape’ indeed. Just as their breasts were meant to mimic the buttocks – the usual view for our primate ancestors, given their preferred sexual positions.
It was actually his next book, expanding on that topic – Manwatching – which caught my own teenage interest in the other subject that sells just as well as sex: violence. Morris pointed out that a man in an argument with a flushed face has all his blood in his skin, whereas a man with a pale face has all his blood in his muscles and therefore is far more likely to strike first.
It was dramatic inferences from observations like this that led me to biology as an undergraduate at Morris’s alma mater, Oxford. It was there that I met him thirty years ago. These inferences continue to inform my work today, including my research on the interaction and co-evolution between humans and wolves and their domesticated descendant, the dog, for my book, The Children Of Wolves: How Men And Dogs Were Forged In The Land Of Ice. (You can keep reading the article here.)
22 November 2025
The smart set’s talking about… Daredevil relights old flame after parting from polo star
Once hailed as ‘the most bad-ass Old Etonian ever’, daredevil author Alexander Fiske-Harrison has taken fright at matrimony.
I hear that the Belgravia-born former bullfighter, 49, has ended his engagement to top Austrian polo player Klarina Pichler, 44, and rekindled a romance that began in the quads of Oxford University.
‘I can confirm that Klarina and I parted ways at the beginning of this year, with great sadness and mutual respect,’ Xander tells me. ‘I have finally washed the blood [of bullfighting] from my hands and pivoted back to my original role [as conservation biologist], from my time at Oxford.’
He is now going out with a girlfriend from his university days, the French film actress Camille Natta, 48.
‘Next week, we set off, reunited like Odysseus and Penelope,’ says Xander, who’s writing a book with Camille [as photographer, The Children Of Wolves: How Dogs and Humans Were Forged In The Land Of Ice, alongside the great David Yarrow.]
He previously went out with Lord Brocket’s model daughter, [The Hon.] Antalya Nall-Cain,[who later became Princess of Prussia], 13 years his junior.
Author’s Note: Ms Natta later left the project and returned to Los Angeles and her husband.
Deleted: 
Deleted:
Now, a fuller story emerges. One of Winters’s exes had remained in his life, but they’d had a falling-out. He despaired of ever seeing her again. Outside the bar, Alexander presses him: “Did you do the full back-down? There are two ways to apologize. One way is, ‘I’m really sorry if what I did offended you.’ And the other way is, ‘I’m very sorry.’” Among the men around him, opinions vary on what Winters should do. Alexander shares his own tale of romantic turmoil [see above]. Then for the next 15 minutes or so, Winters and I go silent as he entertains us with accounts of interviewing bullfighters in Spain.”
The Children Of Wolves 