“He liked to say, with the false modesty that is permitted to great successes, that his career was a series of disasters. As well as his failure to enter art school, he failed to make the grade in his first choice of career, as a game warden in Africa. His second choice was to work on the buses. Before he embarked on this, however, he put his artistic ambition and love of African wildlife together, to create the singular success by which he is known.”