As a boy I grew up outdoors. Climbing trees, reading commando comics and listening to tales from my Grandfather. A Grandfather who’d served in the 8th Army during WWII. He was a consummate story teller, but sometimes a reluctant one. Only later did I realise that the stories of adventure were also likely to be tinged with loss.
The End of the Game creates a similar sense of adventure. It follows the story of game hunting with a focus on Kenya, the characters - explorers, big-game hunters, Kings and Presidents through to conservationists. From the initial naive quest for adventure through to its devastating consequences. In 1899 Nairobi was just a muddy tent town. By the end of the book, Tsavo National Park has been established, with the book questioning its impact on the environment and the animals it seeks to protect.
“In order to preserve the wildlife of wilderness at all, some middle ground must be found between brutal and senseless slaughter and the unhealthy sentimentalism which would just as surely defeat its own and by bringing about the eventual total extinction of the game” Page 197, TDR writing in 1905
Peter travels routes taken by the earlier hunters, obtaining possibly one of the last handwritten visas. His guide, having limited options, acquires a clocked, clapped-out Land Rover as a mode of travel. They visit Northrup McMillan estate, where Karen Blixen - pen name Isak Dinesen, author of Out of Africa - learnt to grow prized Peonies and President Theodore Roosevelt shot hippopotami. Weaving the firsthand accounts into the narrative is done artfully. Peter acts like a journalist present at the time, not reconstructing events many decades later. We are left wondering if Peter is photographer, historian, copywriter or explorer.
The bulk of the book deals with the history and impact of hunting. The personal stories are the icing on the cake - historical facts sprinkled on top like unexpected sugar encrusted curiosities. There is a lyricism to the writing, despite its observational tone.
“Even if untouched by concrete and wire, great stretches of land will be as good as dead without the balance of nature” Page 21
The Waliangulu Tribe lived in harmony with elephants for hundreds of years as a form of game control, but find themselves relocated outside of their ancestral home when Tsavo National Park is created. Separated by a physical barrier. In becoming thus separated, they became “thoroughly accomplished alcoholics” 226. The phrase is striking, not least because of how familiar it feels. A community with a generations-deep vocational identity — elephant management practised as game control, knowledge held collectively and tied to a specific place — but has that identity severed by an external policy decision. It feels similar to the language often applied to British post-industrial communities, including the one my own research is set in. The Waliangulu did not fail; they were displaced from circumstances that made their work possible.
The variety of the book keeps the reader interested. Some follow a standard template of two columns with images. Others include diary pages, maps, scattered drawings, double page photographic spreads, travel stamps located in the gutter once held pristine. The whole thing reads like a personal voyage of observation, a story of place and time. It feels authentic. You are connected to Peter’s journey and immersed in the story.
Peter’s style comes through in the book, this short video provides a flavour of the man and his flair. There is a dedication to the subject. The bibliography is comprehensive, running to more than 100 books and articles. A demonstration of long engagement and a rich source for further exploration. This form of long and deep engagement fits my own approach. Variety worth applying where appropriate.
“The damage inflicted on game by the early hunters was comparatively light…[w]hat harm they did lay in their having showed the natives and Asian middlemen how to kill for profit on a large scale. But if the white hunters and poachers of the early days cannot be held responsible for the end of the game, neither can they be totally absolved, for it was certainly with them that modern poaching entered the blood stream of African Life” Page 222
The pattern of good intentions but with consequences no one quite saw coming is not confined to conservation. UK policy has a long history of interventions aimed at so-called ‘Left Behind Areas’. Employment support schemes, community development initiatives, a long succession of regeneration funds. Pride in Place is the current iteration, with three Stoke-on-Trent neighbourhoods now designated for ‘impact funding’. The resources are welcome and the intentions honourable. But Tsavo’s question remains live. Even with evidence, consultation and specialists at the table, some consequences slip through. The very act of designating an area as ‘left behind’ is itself a framing. Happily the language here is different, with the press release speaking “of new powers and tools that communities can use to renew their neighbourhoods and high streets” (source). Let us hope these goals are attained.
The policy question — should we intervene, and how — is a real one, and Pride in Place will be judged on its results. But what stays with me from the book is a question that sits underneath it: who gets to narrate the result? Tsavo is a story of conservation; the Waliangulu sit inside that story as a footnote about alcoholism. But the framing is the work. My own project rests on a belief that this is where post-industrial communities are often misrepresented - not in whether they were displaced, but in the language used to describe what they became. Peter has helped me see why getting that framing right - both in language and story - matters as much as the photographs themselves. This is where the work becomes a joint venture with the subject.
The End of the Game: The Last Word from Paradise
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