The Serpent and the Moon by Princess Michael of Kent

Beautifully written and vividly recalled, this story is immensely touching and illuminating: her descriptions of Africa are fresh and painterly. It is a window into her own world, as much as a really comprehensive study of cheetahs. ‘What makes this book stand out is the princess’s very personal account of her own young life, re-connecting with an estranged father and meeting a loving step-mother, and adopting this small lost animal which she nurtured until the time to release it back into the wild. Tess was the inspiration for Princess Michael’s lifelong interest in cheetah conservation and the epilogue covers some of her work as Patron of the Endangered Species Centre in South Africa and of the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia. The events of that period have remained with Princess Michael for the rest of her life and in A Cheetah’s Tale she recalls not just the tale of Tess, but also the realities of life in Africa: from waking up in the middle of the night to find her father had just shot a lioness that was about to eat her to discovering a deadly Black Mamba curled up inside the loo! The relationship between the young Princess Michael and Tess, whom she hand-reared and later successfully released into the wild having trained her to hunt and survive on her own, will touch every reader’s heart. It was one of the happiest times of her life and she recounts that it was an orphaned cheetah cub (called Tess) who played a huge part in making it so. Then just a teenager, Princess Michael was entranced by the African landscape, by the wildlife and by the people she met. In the early 1960s, Marie Christine von Reibnitz (who would later become HRH Princess Michael of Kent) lived with her father on his farm in Mozambique.

Beautifully written by a natural storyteller and packed with fabulous photographs, it is also a wonderful portrait of Africa – the cheetah version of Born Free – and will delight readers worldwide. This charming autobiographical tale from Princess Michael of Kent tells of a girl growing up and the incredible bond that can exist between people and animals.

The Serpent and the Moon by Princess Michael of Kent