Tony Seth-Smith was the head of the Seth-Smith family.
Tony was born on February 5th 1937 dying just short of 90 on November 22nd 2025 after declining health following the death of his son Martin in 2022 and his beloved terrier, Fupi, a year later taken by a python at the back door.
Schooling started at Kenton College, Nairobi, followed by Charterhouse in Surrey, England and Oriel College, Oxford University from 1953. Prior to University Tony did two years of National Service, joining the Kenya Regiment, and served part of this two-year period during the Mau Mau Emergency in Embu as a District Officer.
In 1956 he was made an Honorary Game Warden, and retained this position into Kenya's independence, making him one of the longest surviving Hon. Warden in the country.
He returned to Kenya from university in 1960 and a year later married his first wife, Renate Thiel, with whom he had two children: Karen Annette and Martin.
After coming down from Oxford, Tony did his National Service, training with the Kenya Regiment (T.F.) during the Emergency (1952-60), and then seconded to Embu as a temporary DOKG (Kikuyu Guard), after which he joined the Kenya Game Department in 1961 becoming a licensed professional hunter in 1963, when he joined Hunters Africa hunting over the years in the Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Botswana.
He and Renate divorced in 1970 and in 1971 he married Sarah Fielden with whom he had a daughter, Tana, in 1977.
During this time, he had the responsibility of running the Njoro farm, Rotharini, on which he'd spent most of his childhood. Farming was not his natural bent; his passion lay in the bush. He engaged a Danish Manager to run the farm whilst he pursued his hunting career and his love of trout fishing. He was a born naturalist and upon retirement became a dedicated conservationist on moving in 2004 to a small farm on the northern shores of lake Naivasha to Lentolia (a name derived from the Masai “Naitoli” meaning land of the Crested Crane) that forms part of a wider conservancy.
Recognised as a trusted authority on wildlife, conservation and Kenya history, he was featured in many articles, the last one with the late renowned photographer Martin Parr, and documentaries: Jeremy Paxman's “Empire” and “History of Safari” with Richard E. Grant. An independent documentary film maker, Sara Nason, made a Vimeo production “Eden at the Crossroads” depicting his conservation efforts on Lentolia and his thoughts on the past and the present.
He wrote an autobiography "For the Honour of the Hunter...", the title taken from a poem by Rupert Brooke, and more recently co-authored "Donald's War" with Julia, his daughter-in-law, gleaned from his father's diaries written during WW1.
Tony was a first class shot dubbed “one shot Tony” through his work as KWSs longest-serving Honorary Warden. He was a full time Game Warden on the Galana Game Management Scheme in 1961 and 1962 with Ian Parker.
His Galana experience led to his involvement in managing elephants in Uganda's Murchison Falls National Park encapsulated in the text book: “Elephants and Their Habitats: the Ecology of Elephants in North Bunyaro, Uganda.” Oxford University Press 1975. The scheme and the accompanying scientific research provided material for more than 50 seminal papers on elephant biology.
Tony's affinity for the wild was shaped in his childhood, learning bushcraft from the N'dorobo forest dwellers above Lake Nakuru, particularly Mtarakwa, his mentor. These dignified people survived by hunting with bow and arrow and collecting honey, they dressed in the skins from the animals killed and built their dwellings using such materials at hand. Each family was responsible for a stretch of forest from the Mau to the lake. Sadly, their ways and traditions have since been swallowed up by modernisation and deforestation.
Following Kenya's 1977 Hunting ban, Tony transitioned to leading photographic safaris with Ker & Downey. By this time Rotharini had gone the way of many European-owned farms that were compulsory purchased, moving the family to Karen in 1974.
During this period he also became involved with others in cattle ranching on a large tract of dry wild country in the South East of Kenya where lion systematically decimated the herd as it moved from one water hole to the next.
Whilst he could be cynical, he was known for his sharp wit and generosity in quietly supporting friends in need, whether for medical care or travel.
When the hunting ban was introduced and his camp staff and gun-bearers found themselves without a job, he turned the farm pick-up into a mtatu taxi to give them an income. They were to pay Tony for petrol out of the proceeds. In no time, the pick-up's tail-gate was bent from the many passengers getting in and out. The staff refrain at the close of day: “Sorry Bwana, but we've had a bad day with few passenger takings.”
An entrepreneur, he pursued various ventures adding cars to Arnie Mitchell's fleet of hire cars, an aeroplane to Andrew Enniskillen's Sunbird Charter Company. With Mike Prettejohn and others, he had an interest in the 400,000-acre Rukinga and Taita Ranches near Voi. He and Anthony Duckworth turned the English wildlife artist and cartoonist Roger Mcphail's original paintings of Kenya's game animals, birds and its peoples into posters for sale to tourists. Again, with Mike Prettejohn and Campbell Bridges, the latter a geologist and gemologist, he invested in a gold venture on the Turkwell in the 80s until this particular enterprise became too dangerous as the price of gold rose sharply.
Tony's connection to Muthaiga Club was rooted in history. His father, Donald, tasked with overseeing the building of the Club, cycled in from his Kakuzi farm near Thika with a man servant and a donkey, his dinner jacket packed. The by now rather mangy glassed-in lion was one contributed by Donald that he'd shot on the Kapiti Plains.
He will be sorely missed, but his legacy lives on in his grandchildren: Anthony, Bryony, Matthew, Cassia, and his youngest Josh and Allegra.
Lentolia, January 2026