The Woman Who Lived in a Tree: & Other Perfect Strangers

There Really is a Woman who lived in a tree - for 16 years, in fact. A leopard occasionally shared her arboreal home: lions stalked underneath.

There's also a man who flew clean round the world in a microlight powered by a lawnmower engine. And a woman who single - handedly hauled a sled to the South Pole. A climber who turned back 150 metres from the top of Everest and an elephant whisperer who saved the Baghdad Zoo. These people are about as diverse as you can imagine, but they have one thing in common: they are Africans.

'They're real heroes,' says award-winning travel writer and naturalist Don Pinnock, 'but few people seem to know about them. So I tracked them down. Their stories are extraordinary. They make you look back at your life and think of all the things you coul.