The great game hunter who saved Roosevelt’s life
He was one of the greatest big game hunters, who saved Theodore Roosevelt, the former US president, from a rampaging hippopotamus and ended one expedition with a haul of 11,400 animals killed or captured.
But in the decades since he died, the name of Richard John “RJ” Cuninghame has slipped into obscurity, as his writings remained hidden in his family archives.
Now, almost 90 years after his death, the astonishing story of his life can be told after his previously unseen journals emerged as part of an auction of the contents of his former home.
Over several expeditions the British hunter and explorer travelled thousands of miles through eastern and central Africa during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, crossing terrain where Europeans had never before set foot....