Nine Faces of Kenya

Elspeth Huxley was born in 1907 and first went to Africa in 1913. The story of her childhood years, memorably dramatized for television by John Hawkesworth in 1982, was told in The Flame Trees of Thika (1959) and its sequel, The Mottled Lizard (1962). She returned to England in 1925 and studied agriculture at Reading University and Cornell. She married Gervas Huxley in 1931 and during the thirties travelled widely with him in Africa, America, Australia and elsewhere. Among the many novels, biographies, travel books and memoirs that she has written are several about East Africa, including White Man's Country (1935), Red Strangers (1939), The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1948), Forks and Hope (1964), Nellie: Letters from Africa (1981) and Last Days in Eden (1984). In 1962 she was awarded the CBE. Elspeth Huxley has one son and three grandsons and lives in Wiltshire.