Oscar Watkins was a Bisley shot and a hockey "Blue" for Oxford University; a cavalry trooper in the Boer War; a magistrate on the Kenya Slave Courts which freed the slaves early in this century; Commandant of the 400,000-strong Carrier Corps in the East Africa Campaign in World War I; acting Kenya Chief Native Commissioner and Provincial Commissioner; and the first editor of a Swahilli newspaper which, under his editorship, gained the largest circulation of any paper in Africa.
He strove unceasingly to protect the interests of the African peoples. Resisting the pressures from European settlers for more labour to be made available to work on their farms, and for more land to be made available for European settlement, he found himself on a collision course with the settlers and their fiery leader Lord Delamere, and a Governor who was inclined to take their part.
This tribute to Oscar Watkins is written by his daughter.

Growing up in Kenya in the early twentieth century, the brothers Matu and Muthegi are raised according to customs that, they are told, have existed since the beginning of the world. But when the 'red' strangers come, sunburned Europeans who seek to colonize their homeland, the lives of the two Kikuyu tribesmen begin to change in dramatic new ways. Soon, their people are overwhelmed by unknown diseases that traditional magic seems powerless to control. And as the strangers move across the land, the tribe rapidly finds itself forced to obey foreign laws that seem at best bizarre, and that at worst entirely contradict the Kikuyu's own ancient ways, rituals and beliefs.

In an open cart Elspeth Huxley set off with her parents to travel to Thika in Kenya. As pioneering settlers among the Kikuyu people, they built a house of grass, ate off a damask cloth spread over packing cases and discovered - the hard way - the world of the African.

When Elspeth Huxley's pioneer father buys a remote plot of land in Kenya, the family sets off to discover their new home: five hundred acres of Kenyan scrubland, infested with ticks and white ants, and quavering with heat. What they lack in know-how they make up for in determination: building a grass house, employing local Kikuyu tribe members and painstakingly transforming their patch of wilderness into a working farm. Huxley's unforgettable childhood memoir is a sensitive account of settler life at the turn of the twentieth century and a love song to the harshness and beauty of East Africa.

In this sequel to The Flame of Thika, Elspeth Huxley takes up her story after the family returns to Kenya after the First World War. Her family and friends, their home and their travels, the glorious wildlife and scenery, described in rich and loving detail, all spring to life in this enchanting book. 'She knows East Africa and she loves it. . . with a critical and understanding sympathy. ' The Times 'What a marvellous writer. . . and what a Kenya it was. ' Financial Times