Mark Shand

" Mark Shand, conservationist, adventurer and brother of the Duchess of Cornwall, fell in love with elephants as a teenage rebel more than 40 years ago. He had just been expelled from his Dorset public school for smoking cannabis... He professes great admiration for Prince Charles's eco-campaigning and his "real passion for all things green" — though in fact the true pioneer was Shand's former father-in-law Teddy Goldsmith, the late founder of The Ecologist magazine and uncle to environmentalist Zac. Shand confirms recent rumours that his marriage to Teddy's actress daughter, Clio Goldsmith, has ended, but says he still frequently sees their 15-year-old daughter Ayesha, who lives in Italy. "[Clio and I] are divorced, yes. But I won't talk about it, do you mind? I do gab about all sorts of things, but not that."

"In many ways Shand is a throwback, a grizzled old swashbuckler whose exploits are straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. Today we're used to macho, clean-cut adventurers with BBC contracts and a mission to educate — Bear Grylls, Ray Mears, Ben Fogle, even Michael Palin — but Shand, together with his great friends and mentors, photographer Don McCullin and the late writer Bruce Chatwin, travelled the world out of pure curiosity, and largely for fun."

As a BBC conservationist and travel writer, he authored a book and the corresponding BBC documentary Queen of the Elephants, based on the life of the first female mahout in recent times.

Affiliations

• Founder, Elephant Family