An Evening with Jonathan Hollins

Jonathan Hollins is a senior vet with over forty years experience. Since the mid-2000s, he has worked in the British Overseas Territories of the South Atlantic and has a home on St Helena. There, he looked after the world’s oldest living land animal, Jonathan the Giant Tortoise.
Join us for a Q&A session with Jonathan and the opportunity to buy his memoir Vet at the End of the Earth.

The role of resident vet in the British Overseas Territories of the Falklands, St Helena, Tristan da Cunha and Ascension encompasses the complexities of caring for the world’s oldest land animal – a 200-year-old giant tortoise – and MoD mascots at the Falklands airbase; pursuing mystery creatures and invasive microorganisms; relocating herds of reindeer; and rescuing animals in extraordinarily rugged landscapes, from subtropical cloud forests to volcanic cliff faces.

Hugely entertaining and affectionate, Jonathan Hollins’s tales of island vetting are not only full of ingenuity and astounding fauna – they are also steeped in the unique local cultures, history and peoples of the islands, far removed from the hustle of continental life.