The Honourable Pat O’Neill has lived an exceptional, adventure filled life that we could emulate if only we were prepared to let go of our fears.

Broadlands Stud

The sweeping drive leads through Broadlands Stud to the front of a russet-coloured colonial mansion. Built in 1870, just outside Somerset West at the foot of Sir Lowry’s Pass which winds over the Hottentot’s Holland mountains, this is the home of the Honourable Pat O’Neill. Inside, the visitors’ book includes the peers who have passed through the farm in the more than thirty years that she has owned it – among them the leading families from Britain with titles such as Kent, Gloucester, Suffolk, Northumberland and Norfolk.

The first time I met the regal, seventy-something O’Neill some ten years ago, she was standing in the entrance hall. She was still beautiful despite recovering from a facelift. ‘I’m just a vain old lady, who refuses to live with a tired face,’ she laughed, as she gently touched a tender spot.

Gardens of the World

O’Neill loves things that open out, and wide doors yawn onto a lush garden, which is featured in the book Gardens of the World. This airy feel is carried through to cavernous, flower-filled rooms – all decorated with bright paintings and old, easy furnishings, and all packed with the fifty dogs and countless cats she has rescued over the years from as far afield as Zanzibar.

At night these animals sleep with her on a massive bed with a chimpanzee, Kalu, and over thirty baboons that have also been saved from bad deals they received at the hands of humans and have access from their cage to her bedroom through a trapdoor.

‘These are my children,’ she explained, ‘and bonding by close proximity to the mother figure is best done at night.’

Teaching Monkeys to Swim

Outside, a resident artist has painted a jungle scene mural on a wall near the pool where O’Neill’s Australian Olympic gold-medallist husband was teaching a vervet monkey to swim. Behind him a peacock pecked at the grass, a goat head-butted another and a red macaw called to its mate in the garden O’Neill recreated to resemble the one she had at her lodge in Kenya.

When she dies, this extensive property, except the house that will go to her husband and her brother, will be placed in a trust to be administered by the Jane Goodall Institute for the Animals.

‘I’m just giving something back to animals for the role they have played in allowing me to lead such an extraordinary life,’ says O’Neill, patting her combed hair.

Fear Nothing

From her father, the dashing British hero General Cavendish, O’Neill inherited her aristocracy, courage and the one rule he lived by: Fear Nothing. From her mother – a sensuous Australian beauty who was courted by some of the world’s richest and most powerful men and who owned 100 dogs, parrots, a mongoose and a cheetah that followed her everywhere – she got her stunning beauty, wealth and love of animals.

‘I still remember the look in people’s eyes when they were out walking their dogs to pass my mother and I with a cheetah,’ she smiled. ‘For a young girl it was quite embarrassing.’

Fairy Tale & Soap Opera

O’Neill’s life reads like a cross between a fairytale and a soap opera. Though she was close to her parents, it was a time when the English upper-classes kept a respectful distance from their children and still believed that an education was harmful for girls.

During the day, a retired Oxford don taught her classical history and, when lessons were done, handed her over to a strict governess not averse to wielding the whip. ‘I was a wilful child and I needed to be kept in line,’ she said. ‘I had everything, and without discipline I would only have grown up spoilt and unable to care for myself.’

Viscount Furness

She became even more removed from her family when her father died. Her mother quickly remarried, becoming the third wife of Viscount Furness – then the world’s wealthiest man whose taste for the good life led to him being dubbed ‘Champagne Lordy’.

There were safaris in Kenya in six Rolls Royces converted to safari cars – one for the cheetah – with a plane flying in every day to deliver essentials such as a hairdresser, caviar and champagne. Then there were voyages round the world in his ship and trips in his luxury train, which had a special compartment for the children he detested – including O’Neill, who he called ‘the little bitch’.

World War II

Unable to keep his wife’s lovers at bay, the viscount bought an entire village near Monaco and moved the family there permanently so that his staff could keep unwelcome guests at bay. They were here at the beginning of World War II and, as the Germans advanced through France, so Furness – who was dying of cirrhosis of the liver – and the family clambered into a fleet of limousines to rush to the last refugee ship before it sailed.

But, as they reached the quay, Furness saw the crowds of the ‘great unwashed’, shouted, ‘I’m not getting on that fucking boat’ and threatened to disinherit his wife if she did. She decided to stay and asked Somerset Maugham, who was with them, if he would take O’Neill, but the girl threw such a tantrum that her mother agreed to let her stay.

Dash for Portugal

The pair nursed the nobleman during his last days and after he died they turned their attention to helping people fleeing the Nazis. As the enemy got closer they could stay no longer, so they made a dash for Portugal and were flown to London in a plane sent for them by Winston Churchill.

They arrived during the Blitz and, rather than take shelter, O’Neill’s mother led her to the balcony to count the bombs. But there was a bombshell of a different kind waiting for her mother. Furness’s second wife had bribed his nurse to testify that her employer had been poisoned. It was only when the nurse recanted that the inquiry was dropped, but the suspicion continued to dog her for the rest of her life.

‘It was a complete fabrication,’ said O’Neill. ‘Rather than kill him, she did everything to help him in the face of grave danger.’

Ranch in Kenya

After the war O’Neill’s mother bought her son a ranch in Kenya. On one of O’Neill’s visits to her brother he gave her a three-day-old lioness cub – a tiny ball of spotted fur, its eyes still covered in a bluish film. She tried to get it to France, but was refused permission so her mother purchased her a farm overlooking the Ingong Hills in the Northern Frontier Province and she moved there with the lioness, Tana – named after the river that runs through the area.

Here, she immersed herself in the tribal culture of Kenya, in the soul of the landscape, the rhythms of the climate, the growth of plants and trees and the natural movement of birds and animals. Everything she learnt she applied to establishing a relationship with Tana – one that she claims was more special than that between Joy Adamson and Elsa because Tana was her equal and friend, not her subject or pet.

Rescued Animals

She also surrounded herself with an assortment of rescued antelope, dogs, baboons and a chimpanzee, all of whom she taught to get on with each other. In the years that followed it became common to see her walking through the bush with a lion and a Thompson’s gazelle in tow.

‘I love walking and I’d spend weeks in the bush following elephants,’ she recalled. ‘Even when I was at home I’d wake in the morning and think this is fantastic, a new day, where can we go? Then I’d look round at the animals and I could see that look in their eyes that said, “Here we bloody go again”.’

Saved by a Lion

For most, the dangers – living alone in a remote area, snakes, crashing elephants, crocodile, malaria, the Mau Mau uprising and the wild lions that would come courting whenever Tana was in season – would have been too much. For O’Neill, who lived by her father’s injunction, it was an opportunity to develop an alliance with nature and learn extraordinary things about herself and about life.

‘People quickly learn to make do in their environment and seldom spend time considering what might or might not happen,’ she remarked. ‘The bush was where I was and I adjusted to its demands. If something wasn’t right I’d quickly feel it or detect an edginess in the animals – call it a sixth sense if you want. I remember waking up one morning during the Mau Mau uprising feeling distinctly uneasy to find that the animals were also jumpy. That afternoon I was attacked by insurgents who tried to strangle me with a rifle. Fortunately I was expecting something to happen and stayed close to Tana who chased them off.’

Communicating with Animals

Part of her success in this hostile environment is owing to her ability to communicate with animals. Only once, when she contracted a fever, did the wires cross. Passing in and out of consciousness, she kept hallucinating that a steamroller was flattening her.

It was, in fact, Tana lying on top of her to protect her from those trying to get to her so they could treat her. Eventually one of her employees crept under the bed and reached up and yanked the lioness’s tail. Tana jumped off O’Neill to investigate and the doctor pulled O’Neill out the room and slammed the door so he could examine her in safety.

Insisting on Staying in Africa

Later, even her mother began to panic when the Shifto border war between Kenya and Somalia flared across the Tana River. O’Neill also sensed that all was not well and had begun returning the animals, including Tana, who shared her life, to the wild. But she refused to return to England or Europe, insisting on staying in Africa.

As a compromise her mother bought Broadlands for her. Even in this beautiful setting, it took her two years to get over the grief of leaving Kenya – only pulling herself together when she recreated her Kenyan garden, began taking in traumatised animals and putting her remarkable ability to communicate with animals to work in establishing one of the finest horse studs in the country.