OUT IN THE MIDDAY SUN - Hardcover

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.

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.