In memory of Elspeth Joscelin Huxley CBE (née Grant; 23 July 1907 – 10 January 1997) was a polymath, writer, journalist, broadcaster, magistrate, environmentalist, farmer, government advisor, and Anglo-Imperial. She wrote 30 books; but she is best known for her lyrical books The Flame Trees of Thika and The Mottled Lizard which were based on her experiences growing up in a coffee farm in Colonial Kenya. Her husband, Gervas Huxley, was a grandson of Thomas Huxley and a cousin of Aldous Huxley. Nellie and Major Josceline Grant, Elspeth Grants parents, arrived in Thika in what was then British East Africa in 1912, when she was 5 years old, to start a life as coffee farmers and colonial settlers. Flame Trees... explores how unprepared for rustic life the early British settlers really were. Elspeth was educated at a whites only school in Nairobi. She left Africa in 1925, earning a degree in agriculture at Reading University in England and studying at Cornell University in upstate New York. Elspeth returned to Africa periodically, becoming the Assistant Press Officer to the Empire Marketing Board in 1929. She resigned her post in 1932 and traveled widely. During this period, she published her first works including Lord Delamere and the making of Kenya – a biography of the famous settler. In 1948 The Sorcerers Apprentice – A Journey through Africa was published. She was appointed an independent member of the Advisory Commission for the Review of the Constitution of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (the Monckton Commission). An advocate of colonialism early in life, she later called for independence for African countries. In the 1960s, she served as a correspondent for the National Review magazine. Huxleys Red Strangers was republished by Penguin Books in 1999 and by Penguin Classics in 2000; Richard Dawkins played an important role in getting the book republished, and he wrote a preface to the new edition. This work describes life among the Kikuyu of Kenya around the time of arrival of the first European settlers. Synchronicity to Jaffe. Huxley was a friend of Joy Adamson, the author of Born Free, and is mentioned in the biography of Joy and George Adamson entitled The Great Safari. Elspeth Huxley wrote the foreword to Joys autobiography The Searching Spirit. https://youtube/watch?v=MhGeH07lo5M
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 01:23:15 +0000
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