‘masterly account of the massacre of the African elephant’ - The Spectator

It is more than a thousand years since the exploitation of the elephant began, when they were most commonly used as war elephants. However, it is only in the last hundred years, with the coming of the ‘great white hunters’ and their special elephant guns, that the very existence of the African elephant has been threatened.

With an update by John Hanks, WWF’s former leading elephant scientist, this new edition of Blood Ivory tells the story of how the professional hunting fraternity was the first to realise the threat to the elephant and how it kick-started the whole conservation movement. It is not a story with a happy ending, however. It is a tale of war: colonialists against traditional practices and customs; newly independent African countries against each other; poachers and smugglers against any kind of constraint.

Robin Brown draws on his depth of knowledge and understanding of Africa and his career as a leading wildlife film-maker to paint a vivid picture of hunting’s impact on Africa’s elephant population, vividly portraying the powerful personalities of those involved on both sides of the massacre.

‘Masterly account of the massacre of the African elephant.’

ROBIN BROWN is a film-maker whose credits include documentaries on Peter Scott and Wilfred Thesiger, the Nature Watch series with Julian Pettifer and the EMMY-winning In the Company of Whales. His books include two volumes of autobiography (Bye Bye Shangri La and Shark Infested Custard), several novels, and The Lost City of Solomon and Sheba and Marco Polo for Sutton Publishing.