Aidan Hartley

Aiden Hartley is the Spectator's Wild Life columnist.

The nuance of Kenya

28 October 2023 9:00 am

Wild life

30 September 2023 9:00 am

Hassan still has no dhow to captain

2 September 2023 9:00 am

Kenya Hassan was our skipper. He’d take us in his dhow out on the Indian Ocean for trips along the…

A farewell to alcohol

5 August 2023 9:00 am

Laikipia Some are saved by Jesus and they are sober. For others, drunkenness is as natural as love-making, roasted meat…

The beauty of Boran cattle

8 July 2023 9:00 am

The Farm, Laikipia Outside the nightjars were calling and a zebra brayed in the valley. The constellations were still bright…

Progress is coming to our remote corner of Kenya

10 June 2023 9:00 am

Laikipia The principal of the local polytechnic was waiting for me in the kitchen. Frequently in the kitchen there is…

We survived the worst drought in a generation

13 May 2023 9:00 am

The Farm, Laikipia I realised the worst drought of this generation was at last over this morning when two Samburu…

How Moscow can pervert the course of Africa’s future

15 April 2023 9:00 am

On the lengthy train ride to Kyiv I read my Plokhy as we trundled through seas of mud, passing villages…

My conversations with Wilfred Thesiger

18 March 2023 9:00 am

When Wilfred Thesiger arrived in the port of Al Mukalla after his foot crossing of the Empty Quarter desert with…

The man who makes money where no one else dares to go

18 February 2023 9:00 am

Rwanda The mineshaft is dark, the air humid and starved of oxygen. I follow Marcus Edwards-Jones out of the muddy…

Wild life

18 January 2023 10:00 pm

In praise of missionaries

17 December 2022 9:00 am

Kenya Tonj is a war-battered settlement on a river that eventually feeds into the White Nile, in South Sudan. When…

The energy of the world is shifting south

19 November 2022 9:00 am

Kenya Greetings from Africa, my beleaguered cousins. I’ve written before about how in 1973, Uganda’s Idi Amin telegrammed Queen Elizabeth,…

Class of the 1980s: my Balliol reunion

22 October 2022 9:00 am

Laikipia, Kenya No portrait of Boris Johnson hangs in the hall of Balliol, his old Oxford College. Hardly a surprise,…

The man-eating leopard of Laikipia

24 September 2022 9:00 am

Laikipia Plateau, Kenya Until only a few years ago, the constellations blazed across the sky above the farm at night…

How Kenya viewed the Queen

11 September 2022 11:03 pm

As the Union Jack was run down the flagpole at Kenya’s independence in December 1963, Prince Philip said to Jomo…

Waiting for the rain that never comes – and for the elections to be over

27 August 2022 9:00 am

Kenya After two years of no rain, all colour has drained from the landscape on the farm so that by…

When will the West start to deal with Africa on its own terms?

27 August 2022 9:00 am

When will the West start to deal with Africa on its own terms?

Could this election be a turning point for Kenya?

16 August 2022 7:52 pm

In Kenya’s latest general elections, ‘The Hustler’ William Ruto has been declared our new President after a narrow victory against…