In his new book, Jonathan C Slaght, wildlife biologist and best-selling author of Owls of the Eastern Ice, returns to Russia’s far east — but this time, in Tigers Between Empires (Allen Lane, £30), he is chronicling efforts to save the Amur tiger (popularly known as the Siberian tiger) from extinction. In an interview in The Observer yesterday with Andrew Anthony, he talked about the surprising success of his first book, the lessons to be learned in untamed spaces and why tigers do well under autocrats.