Aidan Hartley

Aiden Hartley is the Spectator's Wild Life columnist.

Wild life

25 August 2012 4:00 pm

Kigali Eighteen years after Rwanda’s bloodbath I disembarked from my flight and was surprised to see that mortar craters no…

Wild life

28 July 2012 4:00 pm

Kenya coast A loud crash woke us in the middle of our first night at the beach house. ‘Robbers must…

Wild life

30 June 2012 4:00 pm

Laikipia My new pride and joy is a pedigree Boran bull named Woragus 317. We know him as Ollie. Sired…

Wild life

26 May 2012 10:00 am

Juba After an all-night rainstorm in Juba I woke to see the mosquito that bit me in the dark. Now,…

Wild life

28 April 2012 10:00 am

Laikipia, Kenya Darkness was closing in and one of the sheep was lost. A search party formed. On my Kenya…

Wild life

31 March 2012 11:00 am

I looked at the bomb craters and their shrapnel blast patterns. Dozens of metres away, rocks and tree trunks were…

Wild life

25 February 2012 11:00 am

Kenya  At Nairobi’s Muthaiga Club this week I bumped into Stanley Johnson, author of the superb memoir Stanley, I Presume…

Wild life

28 January 2012 11:00 am

Wau, South Sudan ‘Let’s visit the brewery,’ said Ken when we reached Wau. We were dusty and parched. It was…

Wild life

3 December 2011 11:00 am

Kenya In protest against the lack of law and order in my farming district I have decided to dye my…

Wild life

5 November 2011 11:00 am

Kenya I am proud of Kenya for taking on Muslim extremists in southern Somalia. Rather wisely, the Kenyan military has…

Wild life

8 October 2011 11:00 am

Aidan Hartley’s Wild Life Israel Jerusalem was once a very sad place for me and I feared returning. I was…

Wild Life

10 September 2011 10:00 am

Aidan Hartley’s Wild Life  Nairobi My friend Philip Coulson was shot at midnight while driving home after the theatre in…

Wild life

13 August 2011 10:00 am

Indian Ocean On Hassan’s dhow, shaped like Vasco da Gama’s caravel, I can forget about dry land for a fortnight…

Wild life

2 July 2011 10:00 am

‘So much sorting to do,’ said my Aunt Beryl. We stood in the middle of her home in Sussex. I…

Wild life

4 June 2011 10:00 am

Aidan Hartley’s Wild life Laikipia I had enjoyed a boozy lunch and afternoon in the Men’s Bar of the Muthaiga.…

Wild life

23 April 2011 10:00 am

Kenya Marriage can be hard for all of us. A friend of mine, we’ll call him Charles, works far away…

Wild life

9 April 2011 10:00 am

Weregoi Plains Three shots rang out in the night air. Rustlers had attacked my neighbour’s boma a few hundred metres…

Wild life

12 March 2011 11:00 am

Indonesia In a Jakarta traffic jam it hits me. After decades of frenetic travel, I have learnt less of the…

Wild life

12 February 2011 11:00 am

Democratic Republic of Congo It is impossible to predict how a person will behave in a tight spot. I have…

Wild life

15 January 2011 11:00 am

Juba In the run-up to this week’s referendum on Southern Sudan’s future, I flew to Juba with a bottle of…

Wild life

18 December 2010 11:00 am

Laikipia A Christmas gift of perfume smelling of chocolate caused my wife Claire to burst into tears. ‘I have never…

Wild life

6 November 2010 11:00 am

Laikipia I have a mob of finished Boran steers ready for the holidays. The butchers are suddenly chasing me and…

Wild life

23 October 2010 11:00 am

Bangkok ‘Any Thai man who is not married is gay,’ said a Thai woman to me. ‘You could say that…

Wild life

25 September 2010 10:00 am

Rift Valley The patriarch Jacob Mukhamia Omanyo, grandfather of my friend Celestina, was born in 1888 in western Kenya. For…

Last season

28 August 2010 10:00 am

Kenya Our surfing gang — average age 50 — are out in the bay again, dodging sewage, bull sharks and…