THE spear in my hand killed a man. Like much of the African paraphernalia decorating Brian Dawtrey's New Forest home, it has quite a story behind it.

"There was an expatriate vet in Tanzania who was injecting the local cows with vaccinations," explains Brian, holding the spear. "However, the Maasai tribe didn't like people messing around with their cows because they are holy to them, so they killed him with this. I was given it by my friend who was a magistrate in the court case."

Ordinarily I would have been taken aback by this. However, I'd just spent an afternoon with one of the most extraordinary men I have interviewed and after the stories and anecdotes I'd already heard from Brian, this barely fazed me.

Most of his fascinating tales come from 25 years spent living and working in Africa, although Brian's life was a colourful one from the start, something that was partly down to Adolf Hitler.

As a 13-year-old evacuee, Brian, made an untimely return to his home in Coventry after a lull in the Nazis' bombing campaign.

"My parents had just bought a house in a road called Cannon Close as it happened," Brian chuckles. "I was standing in the kitchen when a bomb hit the house. The whole thing collapsed around me, dust was everywhere."

"This is the reason I think I am like I am - wanting to do something worthwhile."

This was just the beginning of Brian's adventures. After their house was destroyed, Brian and his family moved into rural Warwickshire, where his future path started to take shape.

"That is where I met my wife Jo and that's how I came to be in agriculture," he says.

During this time Brian was also in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, which took him over to what is now one of the world's most contested pieces of land.

"My regiment was sent to Palestine to set up a new state for the Jews coming out of Germany," Brian says with a cool nonchalance. "When I came back I married Jo and then we went into family farming."

It was an occupation that saw them move to a farm in Norfolk, where in between milking cows and herding sheep, Brian and Jo brought up three children - Philip, Richard and Caroline. However this would be a temporary home, as this young family had bigger plans.

"I was the farm manager, I didn't own the farm," says Brian. "We got it in to our heads that we would like to do something more than looking after the interests of wealthy landlords.

"We knew a lot about farming and we wanted to pass down our knowledge to less advantaged people in Africa."

So the young family took the challenge and went out there on an overseas aid programme, for 25 years as it turned out.

"In those days when you were going to darkest Africa, people thought that was the last you would see of them," Brian chuckles.

However these fears were to prove unfounded and instead the family pursued what would be a hugely exciting life abroad. One that would provide Brian and his family with many brilliant memories and a never-ending catalogue of fascinating stories.

"We had a pet cheetah, called Che Che," says Brian. "She was an orphan and she used to get in the back of the car and travel around with us. Nobody ever tried to break into the car!"

Naturally the children were enjoying the new adventure as much as their parents, but it didn't come without its complications.

"The two boys had to travel nearly 1,000 miles by bus to get to school," says Brian. "It would take nearly three days, but they loved it out there."

While the children were off at boarding school Brian was introducing innovative agricultural techniques to Tanzanian farmers, which was significant in making the country and its people more prosperous.

"When I met the Tanzanian High Commissioner in Zambia much later on, he knew the area that I had helped set up," says Brian. "He told me that it was the biggest tobacco producing area in the country, so it had grown and developed since I left. That was really important to me."

As well as introducing new farming techniques to Africa, Brian was the Chairman of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Zambia, where he helped put an end to poaching. "He did this not by catching the poachers but by getting them involved in looking after the animals," explains Jo.

Brian and Jo's African adventure lasted 25 years, which ended in the 80s when they moved to the New Forest - their children left earlier to study, work and travel.

"Jo wanted to come back to her family in England," says Brian. "It was a difficult decision because Africa gets hold of you and eventually you find it as home. The nearest thing to the African bush was out here, so we bought this place."