One of my life’s moments was standing in our kitchen, ironing a shirt and listening to the radio when a piece of breaking news came up about a British diplomat being attacked in Kenya. He had been held up at gunpoint in a car hijacking and was subsequently shot in the neck. My wife Wendy and I looked at each other. We were due to be posted to the High Commission in a matter of weeks. Did this mean all bets were off?

I visited him when he was brought back to Stoke Mandeville and I liked him a lot. But he was in serious trouble, it was clear, being mostly paralysed and in some distress.

Sadly, despite making some remarkable progress, he died of heart failure some weeks later. A few weeks later another member of the High Commission was also shot, in the knee this time but in a similar hijacking attempt, and she was also shipped home for treatment. While we had some previous experience of working in risky places, mainly Jerusalem, we had increasing misgivings about going to a place where the security situation was clearly deteriorating. But go we did.

Despite the efforts of the FCO to dissuade us, because of the increase in hijackings, we were insistent on taking our own cars. We could not go to a posting as a family – a young one at that, with 3 children under 6 – without them. Despite a vague promise that transport might somehow be provided, we could not risk the chance of being stranded without our own means of getting around.

So, we looked for a rugged beast to take with us for our much anticipated safari trips. I had identified a supplier of reconditioned Land Rover Defenders and through him we acquired the blue goddess that eventually went with us. It had been previously licensed to a company owned by George Harrison involved with forestry in Scotland, so we were told. The other car we took was a Rover which gave me a bit of heartburn when, having bought it and set it up for export, I realised that Kenya had no lead-free petrol, whereas the Rover was fitted with a catalytic converter. I was reassured that all that would happen was that the raw petrol would kill the converter, and while this was worse for the environment, it was actually better for the performance of the car. And so it proved. That was my office car and the Land Rover was Wendy’s “runaround”.

That Land Rover still holds a very dear place in every Martin family member’s heart. We had all manner of adventures in it, from navigating roads that seemed impossible to traverse because they were so potholed, to crossing rivers that threatened to cast us adrift. We had countless punctures and occasions of being bogged down in mud or the evil concoction called black cotton – a kind of quicksand – found in the bush. We were often pulled out of trouble or did the same for others. We followed game or were chased by them. But it never let us down. And to cap it all we sold it (to a safari operator) for more than we paid for it after giving it the beating of its life.

It is so eccentrically British that for decades Defenders had an endearing leak onto your right foot when it rained and eventually lost the spare tyre off the back door. What a car.