Happy Valley was the name given to the Wanjohi Valley in the Kenya
Highlands, where a small community of affluent, hedonistic white
expatriates settled between the wars. While Kenya's early colonial days
have been immortalised by farming pioneers like Lord Delamere and Karen
Blixen, and the pioneering aviator Beryl Markham, Happy Valley became
infamous under the influence of troubled socialite, Lady Idina
Sackville, whose life was told in Frances Osborne's bestselling The
Bolter. The era culminated with the notorious murder of the Earl of
Erroll in 1941, the investigation of which laid bare the Happy Valley
set's decadence and irresponsibility, chronicled in another bestseller,
James Fox's White Mischief. But what is left now?
In a remarkable and indefatigable archaeological quest, Juliet Barnes,
who has lived in Kenya all her life and whose grandparents knew some of
the Happy Valley characters, has set out to explore Happy Valley to find
the former homes and haunts of this extraordinary and transient set of
people. With the help of a remarkable African guide and further assisted
by the memories of elderly former settlers, she finds the remains of
grand residences tucked away beneath the mountains and speaks to local
elders who share first-hand memories of these bygone times. Nowadays
these old homes, she discovers, have become tumbledown dwellings for
many African families, school buildings, or their ruins have almost
disappeared without trace - a revelation of the state of modern Africa
that makes the gilded era of the Happy Valley set even more fantastic.
A book to set alongside such singular evocations of Africa's strange
colonial history as The Africa House, The Ghosts of Happy Valley is
a mesmerising blend of travel narrative, social history and personal
quest.
