Return to the Wild

It must be said at once, such is the recent vogue for animal stories, that Return to the Wild is serious (but not solemn), exciting and genuinely original.

For over thirty years Norman Carr has made a study of lions – their hunting, their mating, the education of their young and the establishment, often violent, of prides and their territories. But in 1957 he became the guardian of two male cubs, Big Boy and Little Boy, and was drawn even deeper into this absorbing world; he fed them and took them wherever he was posted by the Game Department of Northern Rhodesia, but otherwise they were under no constraint whatsoever.

As a pair they were less inhibited than a single lion might have been, and although many of their escapades were amusing, others were sometimes dangerously exciting. One night two enraged and resident wild lions invaded and occupied the author’s camp, determined to drive Big Boy and Little Boy from their domain: the latter made a poor showing. But by the Autumn of 196 i Big Boy and Little Boy were capable not only of killing for themselves, but of defending a territory of their own. The time had come for Norman Carr to return them to the wild.

The author has put to remarkable use his opportunities for observing the wild life of Africa, in all its beauty and its ruthlessness: snakes, elephants and crocodiles fascinate him as much as the problems of conservation and the devastating effects of rain and drought. His book is vivid and readable but it is the observations of lions and their habits – with the quite outstanding photographs – which make it memorable.