Aidan Hartley 
18 May 2013
A leopard has been on the rampage night after night. We know her because she often lurks in the woods behind the farmstead, between the beehives and the old long-drop… Read more
Life among South Africa’s nouveaux riches
Not long ago Cyril Ramaphosa, probably South Africa’s future president and ANC leader, attempted to buy a buffalo. It was at an auction for hunters and game ranchers. He bid… Read more
20 April 2013
Colobus monkeys in the forest were throat singing like Tibetan monks. Mist rose from the Kericho tea gardens above us in the gloaming. My son Rider gazed longingly at the… Read more
23 March 2013
Rift Valley ‘We’re on the frontline,’ I said. ‘And however many guns we had, it wouldn’t be enough against the cattle rustlers.’ ‘Yes,’ replied my friend Jamie, a shareholder in… Read more
Kenya election: bullets and the economic boom
The bandit opened fire at me from a distance of about six feet. He rose out of darkness and pumped three bullets into my car as I drove slowly through… Read more
23 February 2013
Rift Valley I am training for a half-marathon on the slopes of Mount Kenya in June and I must prepare myself for failure. I may not even make it to… Read more
What Africa needs now
Kenya: The Prime Minister has committed Britain to a struggle against the ‘existential threat’ of terrorism in Africa that he says will take ‘years, even decades’ of patience, intelligence and… Read more
26 January 2013
Rift Valley ‘I’ve got a brilliant idea,’ said Jools on the phone, his voice characteristically rising like a commentator on the Grand National as Red Rum comes in for the… Read more
15 December 2012
Gilgil, Kenya Pembroke House, our children’s school, is a little slice of England set in Kenya’s Rift Valley. In the shadow of extinct volcanoes they play cricket on extensive grounds.… Read more
Years of living dangerously
The son of a fish-paste factory manager in London’s East End, Alan Root fell in love with ornithology as a Blitz evacuee when he first clapped eyes on the pea-sized… Read more
Cooking for freedom
A few days before I met Ahmed Jama in Mogadishu, three Islamist gunmen from Al Shabaab — al-Qa’eda’s Somali branch — burst into his new restaurant wearing suicide bomb jackets.… Read more
17 November 2012
Northern Kenya If I go out in darkness I dread neither the leopard nor the lion but I recoil from the aardvark: for me a terrifying creature. The ant bear,… Read more
22 September 2012
He was under a tiny patch of shade under a tree in one of the earth’s remotest spots. At Nadapal, the Kenya–South Sudan border, you might expect to meet the… Read more
25 August 2012
Kigali Eighteen years after Rwanda’s bloodbath I disembarked from my flight and was surprised to see that mortar craters no longer pitted the airport tarmac. At a city café where… Read more
28 July 2012
Kenya coast A loud crash woke us in the middle of our first night at the beach house. ‘Robbers must be trying to break in,’ said Claire, kneeing me in… Read more
30 June 2012
Laikipia My new pride and joy is a pedigree Boran bull named Woragus 317. We know him as Ollie. Sired by the famous 956 Segera from the legendary Gianni line,… Read more
26 May 2012
Juba After an all-night rainstorm in Juba I woke to see the mosquito that bit me in the dark. Now, several days later, a fever returns to me like an… Read more
28 April 2012
Laikipia, Kenya Darkness was closing in and one of the sheep was lost. A search party formed. On my Kenya farm big cats, African wild dogs and hyenas abound. Livestock… Read more
31 March 2012
I looked at the bomb craters and their shrapnel blast patterns. Dozens of metres away, rocks and tree trunks were spattered and split from daisy level upwards. I gulped. ‘Say… Read more
25 February 2012
Kenya At Nairobi’s Muthaiga Club this week I bumped into Stanley Johnson, author of the superb memoir Stanley, I Presume and father of Britain’s future prime minister. Mr Johnson… Read more
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