Mark Roland Shand (28 June 1951 – 23 April 2014) was an English travel writer and conservationist, as well as the brother of Queen Camilla.
[1][2][3] Shand was the author of four travel books and as a BBC conservationist, appeared in documentaries related to his journeys, most of which centered on the survival of elephants.
[6] As a result, his father sent him to Australia to make a living on his own, where he had numerous jobs including working as a jackaroo on a station and a guard at an opal mine.
[7] He later returned to London and worked as a porter at Sotheby's, subsequently, he and his friend Harry Fane, the son of the 15th Earl of Westmorland, started a business of selling Cartier jewellery for a while.
The book went on to win the Prix Litteraire d'Amis award, providing publicity simultaneously to the profession of mahouts, and to Kaziranga.
[3][23] Shand was also a patron of Anti-Slavery International,[24] a member of the Royal Geographical Society and an honorary Chief Wildlife Warden of Assam.
[25] On 23 April 2014, Shand was taken to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, New York City, after sustaining a serious head injury caused by a fall outside the Rose Bar, of the Gramercy Park Hotel, after lighting a cigarette.
[26] His nephews Tom Parker Bowles and Ben Elliot flew to New York to escort his body back to the United Kingdom.