"…Even Little Sparrows!" is a semi-autobiographical novel set in a fictitious English Midlands town around the mid-1970’s. Robert Adams, the main character, has passed his final examinations and is posted to the Wappingdon and District RSPCA Branch, his first ‘station’ as a fully-fledged Inspector of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Britain’s largest and most respected animal welfare charity.
Wappingdon is a sprawling, densely-populated industrial town in slow decline following a heyday of steel production in the early twentieth century. The local RSPCA Branch operates a busy animal hospital and kennels complex, and the Inspector’s workload is high. Bob would have preferred a more rural setting for his first ‘station’, but he is determined to make the best of his situation and sets to work with a will, despite an obvious inexperience of the job.
Endeavouring to keep abreast of the ever-increasing worksheets filling his ‘in-tray’, Bob finds himself constantly side-tracked by matters not strictly related to an Inspector’s brief.
When Eric McDougal, his predecessor, secretly returns to enlist Bob’s help in proving Branch Treasurer Basil Ambrose a crook, he reluctantly agrees; but obtaining evidence to support that allegation proves more difficult than anticipated and his resulting scrapes and adventures soon begin to involve the influential Branch Secretary Horace O’Flynn, local broadcaster and mayor of Wappingdon, and other members of the hospital staff, including demure, black stocking-ed Head Nurse, Anna Caldwell with whom he rapidly becomes infatuated.
Though many books have been written on the subject of animal welfare, "…Even Little Sparrows!" differs from its contemporaries, and whilst highlighting the problems of suffering animals, focuses primarily on those people carrying out this vital work: their problems, personalities, lives and loves.
