This book is a blend of travel and nature writing that explores the primary dilemma of the 21st century - the conflict of modern lifestyles with the natural environment. This is an account of the author's journey from the Cape to the Serengeti Plains and his search for an answer to the Old Timer, a Kenyan who foretold the end of the wild.
The book is filled with insights of African elephants and antelope, and with portraits of a natural world inhabited by Bushmen, game wardens and scientists. Running through it is an outspoken and highly ethical regard for humankind's relationship with nature. From his first contact with Bushman rock art in the Western Cape, the author is drawn into a spiritual journey as he grapples with the quandary of balancing our lifestyles with protecting the environment.
Martyn Murray was Nuffield Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge and was later appointed to the University Senate.
I spent the whole evening and late into the night reading the Storm Leopard; books such as this must be published and reach a wide audience. -- George Schaller
Martyn Murray journeys from the Cape of South Africa to the Serengeti Plains, probing some of the great wildlife challenges of our time. He is as much at home roughing it across the continent of Africa as he is in his native west of Scotland He yearns for the wild spirit of Africa to be spared, understood and celebrated. Yet he knows why deals are struck and how the essence of the wild is diluted - the land and its key habitats compromised. The Storm Leopard is a sheer joy to read. -- ECOS
A very well written meditation on all aspects of travel in Africa. -- Peter Matthiessen
Martyn Murray catches landscapes and animals, and the feelings they arouse, like Iris Murdoch when writing at her best He gives cause for hope. -- Aubrey Manning (BBC presenter, Earth Story and Talking Landscapes).
One of the veldt visionaries. -- Charles Clover (author of The End of the Line)