In this marvelous anthology, Elspeth Huxley, our best and most popular writer on Africa, has drawn on her unparalleled knowledge of Kenya and its literature to present a fully rounded portrait of one of the most fascinating countries in the world. In nine sections focusing on exploration, travel, settlement, war, hunting, wildlife, environment, life-styles, and legend and poetry, using only first-hand accounts, she guides the reader through the story of Kenya from AD100 to the present with her characteristic candour and directness.

This is the first book to explore the fascinating relationship between literary Modernism and Empire. The book seeks to begin the task of exploring, in a sustained way, the relations between the artistic movement and colonialism. The essays range over subjects and figures such as Ireland, Africa, Joyce, Pound, Townsend Warner, Lawrence and Forster, Kipling, Woolf, and Jean Rhys.

Elspeth Huxley captivated readers throughout the world with her 'memories of an African childhood' in THE FLAME TREES OF THIKA and THE MOTTLED LIZARD. In this final volume of her trilogy she tells the story of her adult life in Africa, in which the vigorously evoked personalities - from the pioneer Lord Delamere and Baroness Blixen to Jomo Kenyatta - blend with her supurb description of the social, cultural and political upheavals of the time. 'An accomplished story-teller, she weaves anecdotes, character sketches, political history together without losing her thread or the readers momentum. ' SUNDAY TIMES 'She evokes it all lovingly but astringently, especially the glittering, often scandelous life of the young aristocrats who lived in Happy Valley. ' DAILY EXPRESS

A portrait of the conservationalist and chronicler of colonial Kenya describes her childhood in east Africa and wartime Britain; marriage to Thomas Huxley; roles as a farmer, writer, and government advisor.

Based on over two hundred and fifty psychiatric case files, this book offers a radical new departure from existing historical accounts of what is still commonly thought of as the most picturesque of Britain’s colonies overseas. By tracing the life histories of Kenya’s ‘white insane’, the book allows for a new account of settler society: one that moves attention away from the ‘great white hunters’ and heroic pioneer farmers to all those Europeans who did not manage to emulate the colonial ideal. In doing so, it raises important new questions around deviance, transgression and social control. Sitting at the intersection of a number of fields, the book will appeal to students and teachers of imperial history, colonial medicine, African history and postcolonial theory and will prove a valuable addition to both undergraduate and postgraduate courses.