Robin Hanbury-Tenison


Airling Robin Hanbury-Tenison OBE, FLS, FRGS is an explorer based in Cornwall. He is President of the charity Survival International and was previously Chief Executive of The Countryside Alliance.

Life

Hanbury-Tenison grew up on an Anglo-Irish estate in County Monaghan in Ireland, the youngest of five children. He was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1959, he married Marika Hopkinson. She became well known for her cookery books. They had two children, Lucy and Rupert. Marika died in 1982.
Hanbury-Tenison and his second wife Louella own a 14th century farmhouse, Cabilla Manor, on Bodmin Moor, which is both their home and a bed and breakfast business. They have a son, Merlin.
In 1957 Hanbury-Tenison was the first person to travel overland by jeep from London to Sri Lanka.
In 1958 he and Richard Mason became the first to cross South America overland at its widest point.
In 1964–65 he made the first river crossing of S America from north to south from the Orinoco to Buenos Aires.
In 1968 he took part in the Geographical Magazine Amazonas Expedition by Hovercraft from Manaus to Trinidad. Discussions with the ethnobotanist Conrad Gorinsky led to the foundation of the charity Survival International.
In 1971, as Chairman of Survival, he visited 33 Indian tribes in Brazil at the invitation of the Brazilian government and reported on their condition.
In 1977–78 he led the Royal Geographical Society's Gunung Mulu expedition to Sarawak, the Society's largest expedition at that time, taking 115 scientists into the rainforest for 15 months.
Since 1960 Hanbury-Tenison has farmed over 2000 acres of hill farm on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall with sheep and cattle, diversified with Angora goats, red deer and wild boar from Russia, and later farming energy from wind, solar, water and biomass.
In 1982 and 1983 he organised Capital Radio's Venture Days in Battersea Park.
From 1995 to 1998 he was CEO of the British Field Sports Society, now the Countryside Alliance. He organised the Countryside Rally, which brought 130,000 people to Hyde Park in July 1997, and the Countryside March when 300,000 marched through London in 1998.
In 2015–16 he celebrated his 80th year by undertaking eight challenges, starting with the London Marathon, which raised over £80,000 for Survival International.
In 2020 he spent seven weeks in hospital with coronavirus before returning home to celebrate his 84th birthday.

Awards and achievements