When Margot Raggett first picked up a camera 12 years ago, she could little have imagined that it would have led directly to her successful crowdfunding of seven books – not to mention the small matter of raising nearly £950,000 for wildlife-conservation causes. Prior to this, she would regularly go on safaris as a break from the frantic work schedule that was part and parcel of being chief executive of a 120-employee PR company. ‘It’s a cliché,’ she says, ‘but I was cash-rich and time-poor, and I didn’t have a purpose I believed in. But I found wildlife therapeutic. Watching a mother leopard licking her cub, or a baby elephant playing – I didn’t think about work at all.’
Then, in 2010, the day before she was due to set off on a safari with Wildlife Photographer of the Year-winning couple Jonathan and Angela Scott, she
