The leopard is the prima ballerina of the Great Cats, a supreme athlete, a wonderful tree-climber, the most beautiful killer in creation. Yet this lovely animal has been so ruthlessly preyed on by big-game hunters and poachers that in many countries it is now seriously endangered. It was this fact that led Arjan Singh, the celebrated Indian wildlife expert, to attempt the extraordinary experiment described in this book. Living in the north of Uttar Pradesh, on the border with Nepal, and seeing how the local leopard population had dwindled almost to nothing, he determined to find out whether it would be possible to bring up a leopard cub in his house and return it to the jungle.

The story of how he taught first Prince, and then the twin sisters Harriet and Juliette, the ways of the forest is enthralling from start to finish. Sharing his whole life with them, building them machans (or tree-platforms), walking the jungle tracks in their company, encouraging them to hunt, teaching them to disembowel their kills, he came to know the ways and character of the leopard as no man has before. His first great success came when Prince at last took to the jungle, fully rehabilitated, aged nearly two years. Later, in a supremely moving demonstration of trust, Harriet, who had given birth to cubs in the jungle, carried them back to the house, one by one, to escape the monsoon floods, and installed them in a bedroom.

There were setbacks, it is true. Prince and Harriet each killed one human child, and the author’s local critics were vociferous in their opposition. Yet he was supported by Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India (who presented him with the two she-leopards), and in 1976 he was awarded the World Wildlife Fund’s Gold Medal for his conservation work.

Not only did the author succeed in returning a hand-reared predator to the forest, he also, he believed, scotched the fallacy that leopards are treacherous and unpredictable. On the contrary, he felt he demonstrated the ‘essential tranquillity’ of the leopard’s temperament, and showed that it is only the animal’s intelligence, combined with its capacity for effective retaliation when cornered or wounded, which has given it a bad name. In contrast to the early nurtured dependence of Joy Adamson’s lioness Elsa in Born Free, Singh was determined that his leopards should discover their natural ways from the start – even though achieving his ultimate aim inevitably meant the painful separation from these magnificent creatures he came to know and love so well.