‘About one tenth of it is farmland, and all the workers come from the Kikuyu tribe. But the rest of the land is kept wild and the people who live there are Maasai, who roam across the country, herding cattle. Saffron and I have built our own home there, by a watering hole where the animals come to drink. We called it Cresta Lodge, after the Cresta Run in St Moritz, where we first met.’

As he spoke, Gerhard could see the others being seduced, as he had been, by the idea of the private African kingdom where Saffron had been born and raised, a world away from the grey, foggy, bomb-scarred streets of post-war London.

‘While the lodge was being built, we lived with Leon and Harriet, but I was managing the project, so I often camped at the site,’ he said. ‘One morning I woke up before dawn, which is one of the very best times for seeing game, so I decided to go for a walk. It was quite chilly, because Cresta Lodge lies at an altitude of around seven thousand feet and the nights are cold at that height. The air was still and clear, and the loudest noise was the buzzing and chirping of insects around me.

‘There are some low hills behind the house, and I was heading towards them when I saw a big, dark shape moving behind the top of the rise ahead of me. It still wasn’t quite light, so I stopped to look more closely and I realised it was an elephant, a great bull, coming over the brow towards me. More shapes appeared, another bull and then the females and young, all in a line. A couple of the babies were holding their mothers’ tails with their trunks as they trotted along behind them.

‘I remember being struck by how gentle and loving the mothers were to their children, and how serenely the herd moved across the landscape. But at the same time, there was a kind of equal, but opposite impression that these were the mightiest and potentially deadliest creatures I had ever seen. They were like huge, grey, living tanks, trampling everything in their path. I stood absolutely still as they walked past me, no more than thirty yards away, partly because I didn’t want anything to disturb this magical sight, but also because I thought, “I don’t want to get that big bull angry!”’

The story was heard in silence and greeted with appreciative smiles and laughter. ‘Encore!’ Leo Marks called out.