Jungle Soldier – The True Story of Freddy Spencer Chapman

Perhaps, at first glance, you may be wondering why this book is included in a list of reviews of wildlife-centric books? Freddy Spencer Chapman, one of the British army’s deadliest guerrillas was trapped in Japanese occupied Malaya during WW2. Believed dead, he was discovered two years later, having survived as the most hunted man in Japanese-occupied Asia, after suffering terrible privations and illness. One of the key things that kept him going was his love of wildlife, and even at the lowest points, half-dead, he continued to collect seeds of unrecognised plants for Kew and kept a diary with field notes of the birds and other wildlife he encountered. Certainly a different kind of book to the usual, but an amazing account, based on his diaries of that time, of his time in the jungles and the nature that surrounded and inspired him.

Book reviewed by Su Gough