A Man Called Lion: The Life and Times of John Howard Pondoro Taylor Hardcover – November 27, 2002

John Pondoro Taylor and my father met each other in World War II and continued to maintain contact later. (Taylor was based for a while in India during the War.) Both were intelligence officers and both were avid hunters though my father was a sportman who hunted tigers in India and never in Africa.I met Pondoro only once at our home in India, shortly before he died but kept in touch through letters. My memory is that he was returning from Australia and stopped in India on the way to England. This was shortly before his death. He was then in his sixties.Capstick exaggerates the misery of his final years in London. Pondoro had close association with the great British gunmakers, especially John Rigby and Holland & Holland, but I don't know if he had any business dealings with them. He inherited his father's title and was known in later life as Sir John Taylor. His father Sir William Taylor was a famous surgeon who knew my father as a medical student in London.In person and in letters, Pondoro didn't come across as a teller of tall tales. He had the British reserve though Irish in his attitude towards what he regarded as British hypocrisy. As far as Pondoro's homosexuality is concerned, it is pure conjecture on Capstick's part and probably untrue. I say this based on the fact that some years after his death, at Cambridge University, I met a striking looking African woman from Angola who told me she was Pondoro's daughter. She didn't look like him but had some of his mannerisms down to an Irish accent.None of this matters. As far as I am concerned Pondoro was a wonderful man and a wonderful writer, whose writing is much better than anything Capstick ever wrote. I feel that Capstick's book is unfair to Pondoro's memory.

Thanks

fair book but not the wild ride a usual Capstick book is

I have enjoyed Capstick other stories in the past, but this one bored me to tears. It is nought but a rehash of "Pondoro" with some extra information from casual acquaintances of the Irish writer/hunter. The fact that Taylor was a homosexual didn't deserve chapter after chapter since, despite Capstick's analysis, his more serious failings were a total disregard for the Law and an inability to hold on to his pennies. That brought about his downfall, not his preference for the same sex. John Taylor deserved a better epitaph than this book.

I bought this book for my husband. He has really enjoyed reading it.

Very interesting story of this unusual man. Classic Capstick.

The giftee at Christmas was very excited to receive this book!

This book is very special.

The story is most interesting and informative. It gives an insight into what is possably the greatest African Hunter and Ballistition of all time. Well worth the read but be warned, once you pick it up to read, you will not be able to put it down. As luck woukd have it, I started to read it early in the day and it was not until the day after, could I close the book. A must for any one traveling to Africa to hunt.

My purpose in buying the book was to learn more about an elephant hunter. However I found details of an interesting man living in interesting times. Characters like these don't exist anymore and the times they lived in have long gone.The book still leaves many questions unanswered about the character of John Pondoro Taylor which has now inspired me to purchase some of his own original publications.