Let Savannah Diaries take you on a safari of discovery through Africa's most beautiful national parks and big game sanctuaries, in the company of its spectacular wildlife and the remarkable characters – scientists, conservationists, wardens and safari guides – who have devoted their lives to protecting its unique heritage for future generations. Written by the preeminent expert on African wildlife, Brian Jackman, Savannah Diaries reveals the staggering size and scale of sub-Saharan Africa in a celebration of the continent's wild places and their abundance of living creatures.
Author's Note
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Preface
Map
Introduction: Lions at First Light
Chapter One: Maasai Mara
Chapter Two: Serengeti
Chapter Three: Adamson's Africa
Chapter Four: Northern Kenya
Chapter Five: Elephant Country
Chapter Six: Southern Tanzania
Chapter Seven: Zambia
Chapter Eight: Zimbabwe
Chapter Nine: Okavango
Chapter Ten: The Kalahari
Chapter Eleven: The South African Lowveld
Chapter Twelve: Namibia
Chapter Thirteen: Monsoon Shores
Glossary
Source notes
Brian Jackman is a freelance journalist and author with a lifelong passion for travel and wildlife. For 20 years he worked for The Sunday Times, during which time he was voted Travel Writer of the Year in 1982. In that same year he also won the Wildscreen '82 award for the best commentary script, Osprey, at the first International Wildlife and Television Festival in Bristol. Today his work appears mostly in The Daily Telegraph, BBC Wildlife Magazine, Travel Africa and Conde Nast Traveller, where he is a contributing editor. Although his travels have taken him around the world, he is best known as Britain's foremost writer on African wildlife safaris, and has spent more than three years in total under canvas in the bush. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a trustee of the George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trust and a patron of Tusk Trust. His African books include The Marsh Lions and The Big Cat Diary (both with Jonathan Scott), and Roaring at the Dawn.
"Brian Jackman is a passionate but unsentimental conservationist who lives surrounded by reminders of what's gone before. He writes with relish for the experience he is recalling and for the language in which he sets it down. His prose is clean and uncluttered, his sense of history acute."
– The Sunday Times
"The author has that priceless gift of imparting his own enthusiasm without over-emphasis. it is a pleasure to be in his company."
– The Sunday Telegraph
"Brian Jackman not only writes well, but has that rare gift of communicating his own sensual perceptions."
– Birds Magazine
"Few writers are able to evoke a sense of place as effectively as Brian Jackman."
– In Britain Magazine
"An ability to convey the beauty and magic of the place and its wildlife"
– Bridport News
"Brian's book is a delight for all those who have been bitten by lions or would like to be. It is full of the great spaces of Africa that, as he says, are much bigger when you're on foot."
– Simon Barnes, The Times
"It is hugely evocative of the African bush and its animals"
– Good Book Guide
"This is a collection of inspiring, passionate and often rather depressing insights from the real deal."
– Wanderlust Magazine
''A picture may be worth a thousand words – but it depends whose words they are. Those of travel writer Brian Jackman capture the essence of wild places more vividly than any top-end digital SLR camera."
– BBC Wildlife Magazine
"Perfect for bedtime reading."
– Stephen Moss, The Guardian