A FAR FROM ORDINARY LIFE: A DIARY OF ADVENTURES IN AN AFRICA NOW PAST. By Fred Duckworth. Illustrated by Elise van Heijden.

2004 1st edition. Large 4to (220 x 280mm). Ppxii,244. Colour and b/w photographs, b/w illustrations by Elise van der Heijden, map end-papers. Black bonded leather, spine titled in gilt.

"Fred's hunting career nearly came to an end when he was shipped off to Great Britain for the sake of an education and when he learned his father had drowned while hunting elephant in southeastern Tanganyika. Devastated that his mother had sold her husband's guns, he embarked, at age eighteen, on life with his father's all-important last real gift, a .375 HandH Magnum Mauser. Fred's descriptive prose vividly brings to life his wanderings and twists of fate as he evolved from his early years assisting game-control scouts in the Selous Game Reserve in Tanganyika to becoming a licensed professional hunter. Along that path in his long career he hunted for ivory at a time when a 110-pound per side tusker was worth four-month's pay as an assistant game ranger, and he describes the personalities, guns, and game encountered. In a feat that would be impossible today, Fred's perpetual lucky streak landed him highly coveted "real jobs" that led to great adventures. As regional game warden of Nyasaland, he was called in to hunt down thirteen man-eating lions, including the notorious Kasupe lion that had killed seventeen women, nine men, one child, and had mauled another eight people. We find Duckworth in 1972 in the Coptic Christian Empire of Ethiopia, where he was responsible for "reorganizing" the barely existing big-game hunting safari industry. In the meantime, in the Danakil he met his future wife - the beautiful, adventurous Dutch artist, Elise."