11-05-2025
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews A Life Among Elephants: Extraordinary life of the elephant man who took on the poachers...
A Life Among Elephants (Ch4)
Rating:
When Saba and Dudu Douglas-Hamilton were growing up in Uganda, they lived in a derelict house on the banks of the Nile that was once a lodge used by Queen Elizabeth.
It had no windows or doors. Every night, their parents, Iain and Oria, 'shoved a safari chair into the door to keep the hyenas out'.
When the girls bathed in the river, their father stood guard with an AK-47 assault rifle, in case of crocodiles.
'It was just so marvellous,' grinned Saba, on A Life Among Elephants. 'So exciting.'
'Marvellous and exciting' sums up the entire documentary, charting the life's work of Iain and Oria, whose research into the behaviour of elephants became a fearless campaign against the poachers who threatened to drive their beloved animals into extinction.
A tapestry of amateur cine footage, Oria's astonishing photographs and some horrific news footage combined to tell a story of courage and dedication that almost defies belief.
Iain, the son of a fighter pilot killed during World War II, began studying elephants in the 1960s, when little was known of their complex emotional behaviour and social hierarchies.
What began as a PhD project became a lifelong mission after he met Oria.
'He completely knocked me off my feet,' she said, still plainly adoring him after 54 years of marriage.
'Iain is an elephant, so that's his legacy. I married an elephant.'
The animals grew to trust the couple so much that one wild female, nicknamed Virgo, would come up to them and sniff their hands in greeting.
When Saba was born, Virgo sauntered over to inspect the baby in Oria's arms — then brought her own calf for the humans to meet.
Dame Jane Goodall, who was blazing her own conservation trail with chimpanzees in East Africa, described Iain as one of the few naturalists who understood animal behaviour as she did.
'They can feel fear, can be happy, their play is joyful, they care for each other, they show compassion, they both can show altruism,' she said, her enthusiasm undimmed at 91.
'We didn't talk as scientists, we talked as people who love, understand and want to help protect animals.'
But Iain's passion bordered on recklessness. Confronting poachers, he came under fire on several occasions. And as the elephants learned to hate mankind, it became increasingly dangerous to approach them.
He described, with charming nonchalance, how one defensive matriarch charged him, knocked him down and plunged her tusks into the ground next to his body.
'She's batting me around from side to side with her feet,' he said. 'It's like being in a tidal wave.' Convinced he was about to be impaled, 'I thought, this is going to be very interesting.'
He survived — but two years ago was almost killed by anaphylactic shock when a swarm of African bees attacked him and Oria.
The film charted the moment when, after months in hospital, he returned to be with elephants again. Simply extraordinary.
