The System: The Misgovernment of Modern Britain

by Max Nicholson, Max Lerner (Introduction)

A hard-hitting critique of government and public administration. It advocates some radical remedies, including a complete reform of the Civil Service and the abolition of the Treasury.

544 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Edward Max Nicholson was a pioneering English environmentalist, ornithologist and internationalist, and a founder of the World Wildlife Fund. He also wrote as E.M. Nicholson.

Max Nicholson, as he was known to all, was born in Kilternan, Ireland, to English parents. His family moved to England in 1910, settling in Staines. He became interested in natural history after a visit to the natural history museum and later took to birdwatching, beginning to maintain a list of birds seen from 1913.

He was educated at Sedbergh School in Cumbria and then Hertford College, Oxford from 1926, winning scholarships to both. At Oxford, he read history and visited Greenland and British Guiana as a founder member of the Oxford University Exploration Club. At Oxford, he organized bird counts and censuses on the University's farm at Sanford. In 1928, Nicholson created and managed the first national birdwatch survey, a survey of the grey heron.