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White Mischief by James Fox: book review


WhiteMischief (1982) is an airport book that has attracted a readership of vacationers to Kenya over many years – and presumably, will continue to do so. In 1941 Nairobi made international news for the murder of Joss Hay, the 22nd Earl of Erroll, the first subject in Scotland after the Royal Family, at the age of 39.

Fox provides an historical account of the twenty-year period leading up to the murder, the night of the fatality, the trial of suspect Sir John Broughton and his acquittal, and the author’s years of investigative journalism to discover the truth.

From the 1920s, Fox describes the heady two decades of life in Wanjohi Valley - “Happy Valley” - 100 kilometres from Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. It was the height of colonial class privilege and bad behaviour, with excesses at every level of life – alcoholic, drug-induced, financial, and sexual excesses, where love and love affairs had no boundaries and where both single and married men and women had no discretion, only flamboyance and infidelity. And in the heat and altitude, colonials – the white mischief – suffered “debility, irritability, even nervous breakdown.”

In the “supremely beautiful landscape” among beautiful people, Joss Hay was considered particularly beautiful. He was a handsome man with pale gold hair and a charm irresistible to women. He had married Lady Idina Gordon in 1923, the founding inspiration of Happy Valley – it was her third marriage and she was infamous for her own outrageous scandals. They divorced in 1929, and Joss Hay was free for future marriages and dalliances. He remained in Kenya and married Molly who died from a heroine overdose in 1939, so he continued to have a serious affair with a married woman (given an alias in the book) and an open romance with Diana Caldwell, the wife of John Broughton – his best friend. But he also remained friendly with a series of “discarded mistresses.”

Hay’s lover’s husband – John Broughton – was the prime suspect, placed on trial, and acquitted. Fox details the trial, but it only provided a list of unanswered questions and theories. On the fateful night, friends and lovers were holidaying in a large house on the road between Karen (named after Baroness Karen Blixen, Danish author of “Out of Africa”) and Nairobi. At 3:00am Hay’s Buick ran off the road. His body was found wedged on the floor beneath the steering wheel with a bullet hole through his ear. The bullet had travelled “in a straight line from ear to ear” right through his brain.

The book concludes in 1981 with the author’s interview with two witnesses who never took the stand during Broughton’s trial – two 15-year old girls. What did they see? What did they know? After so many years, what did it matter?  







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