C. S. Nicholls – författare

The first biography of the renowned writer, broadcaster, conservationist and chronicler of colonial Kenya, whose lyrical and evocative memoir The Flame Trees of Thika (1959) achieved worldwide fame when made into a television drama series in 1981.Colonial Kenya inspired three great writers – Karen Blixen (Out of Africa), Beryl Markham (West with the Night) and Elspeth Huxley. Huxley’s writings (30 books in all: novels, biographies, political accounts) have great political and social range, encompassing (in her Kenyan books) the exploits of the Happy Valley farmers – made famous by James Fox’s book White Mischief, poor white farmers and the lives of Africans alike.After a childhood spent in East Africa and wartime Britain, Elspeth married Gervas, a grandson of Thomas Huxley and cousin to Julian and Aldous Huxley, whom she knew well. She also later got to know Joy Adamson and the Leakeys. She travelled widely with her husband (an executive with the Empire Marketing Board) and wrote while constantly on the move. She worked for the BBC in World War II and became a Kenyan government adviser. In 1938 she bought a farm in Wiltshire, where she died in 1997.The author, Christine Nicholls, has access to all her letters and papers, and is familiar with many of the people and places in the book. Elspeth Huxley was a compelling personality and a brilliant letter-writer, extraordinarily energetic and effective in everything she did.

St Antony's College, Oxford, was founded by Antonin Besse, a French entrepreneur who wanted to establish an international college in France. When this proved impossible, he turned to the University of Oxford, and the college opened its doors to students there in October 1950. Under the inspired leadership of William Deakin, St Antony's became a centre for postgraduate teaching, specializing in area studies. From the beginning it was the most deliberately inter-national of all Oxford colleges, and by 1999 its students were drawn from over forty different countries. It was also the first Oxford college to admit substantial numbers of both men and women. Based on archival materials and personal recollections, this book recounts the college's struggles to develop and fund its ambitious academic programmes. It also describes the changing lifestyle of its students in a period of expanding postgraduate education.