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More than 150 years ago, Sir Crispin Tickell’s great great great Aunty
Mary sold sea shells on the sea shore. She was Mary Anning, and she found and
sold some of the first and finest fossil fish and marine reptiles to be
discovered in the Jurassic rocks of Lyme Regis in Dorset. She might not have
borne much physical resemblance to Meryl Streep’s character in the film The
French Lieutenant’s Woman, but she too was a talented, tough and finally
tragic woman, trapped by the limitations of her class, sex and time. Only now
are Anning’s skills and acute observations about the fossils finally being
recognised. Try Tickell’s account Mary Anning of Lyme Regis (Lyme Regis
Philpot Museum, Tel: 01297 44337, £2.99, ISBN 0 9527662 0 5).