Conville & Walsh

Alan Root is possibly the world’s greatest wildlife film pioneer and a man who has made endless natural history breakthroughs. He risked life and lung as the first person to film hippos and crocodiles underwater; used an inflatable rhino to get up close to real ones; filmed a hornbill walling up her own nest; ballooned across the Serengeti to film the great migrations; incited spitting cobras to live up to their names and designed new cameras to film within termite mounds.

He’s also an adventurer: he has taken amphibious cars through rapids on the Nile, ballooned over Kilimanjaro, motor-biked through the Congo and still flies helicopters and planes (despite having crashed a couple). But as well as surviving serious attacks by leopards, hippos and gorillas, he has known terrible personal tragedy.

Africa Watch will be a unique document and a superlative book about wildlife, Africa and the environment. It will blend extraordinary observation of animals and the landscape with hair-raising adventure. It will also tell the whole story of Alan’s relationship with his wife and long-term collaborator Joan, who was tragically murdered in 2006 in retaliation to her environmental campaigning in Kenya.