Out In The Midday Sun
Elspeth Huxley
Language: English
Pages: 128
ISBN: B019TLDBV0
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
From Publishers Weekly
Sparked by the popularity of the screen version of Dinesen's Out of Africa, current interest in Kenya may extend to the reminiscences of Huxley, author of The Flame Trees of Thika and other books on East Africa. These recollections of people and places in colonial Kenya, between the start of war in 1933, when Huxley returned from England to write a biography of Lord Delamere, take in her acquaintance with Beryl Markham and with the flashily dressed Johnston (later Jomo) Kenyattawho, "in his loud checked trousers and a belted jacket, carried a walking stick with an amber-coloured stone at its tip" and sat next to her at the London School of Economicsand culminate in the later experiences of her mother Nellie Grant and other characters familiar to viewers of the television series based on Huxley's earlier books. Photos.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Thanks to the recent TV series, Huxley is probably best known for her tale of childhood life in Kenya, The Flame Trees of Thika. The work under review serves, in a sense, as a sequel, as it is set in the Kenya to which she returns as an adult in 1933. Intended neither as a history of Kenya nor as an autobiography, her book is a series of anecdotes, gossip, and vignettes which resurrect the personalities of the time and provide us with an insight into the colonial era through the eyes of those who lived it. It is similar to Errol Trzebinski's The Kenya Pioneers ( LJ 4/1/86) but deals with a later time. For fans of Huxley and those curious about what life was like for Europeans between the world wars, this should prove interesting. Paul H. Thomas, Hoover Inst. Lib., Stanford, Cal .
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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top layer of affluent and successful Asians. One, who kindly invited me to cakes and coffee at his home, is a High Court judge. Other morning coffee guests included a consultant dermatologist and a Sikh business tycoon, the latter an elderly gentleman clad all in white and with a fine white beard. He laughed as he said: ‘I have lost seventy-three million shillings in Uganda and six million shillings in Tanzania. And I am still a happy man.’ He had started his career as a station-master; done a
were for whites only, the Indian members being nominated by the Governor: no blacks, but then there were no black rate-payers. The Council, closely modelled on the British pattern, elected its own mayor and deputy. The numbers on the voters’ roll remind one of English parliamentary elections before the Reform Bill: Glady was duly elected in 1934 by 236 votes to 80. She became an able, energetic councillor, and four years later was elected mayor, and then twice re-elected to that position.
of Mombasa with its coconut palms and customs sheds, its white lime-washed houses and red-tiled roofs and lush vegetation. The Malda steamed slowly between island and mainland into Kilindini harbour, by then equipped with deep-water berths so that you could walk down a gangway on to the island instead of, as in the past, being ferried from ship to shore on tenders. Mombasa’s history is long and bloody; the dogs of war have made a killing here, many killings. Now that they were kenneled for the
rooms, no ceiling, and his bed a bullock-hide stretched between four posts. Four a.m. saw the start of his day. Before dawn, he would be off to some distant dip or shearing station, or perhaps to track down a lion that had seized a steer, or to carry out a post-mortem on a sheep. Much of the land round Kisima had been abandoned, or never taken up, because of lack of water. Bit by bit, Will Powys bought it up and gradually developed it by means of pipelines and dams, and stocked it with sheep
Native Councils, buds of future district and county councils, and Native Tribunals, buds of future law-courts, and equip them with minor officials and sets of rules. After making our number with Murigo we went to the Church of Scotland Mission at Tumutumu, near Nyeri, to collect our interpreter. Both the Kikuyu and I got on all right in Kisettla, but when it came to tribal customs recounted by old men, the Kikuyu tongue was obviously needed. I regretted very much that I had not learnt it, but it