Elspeth huxley biography template
•
Elspeth Huxley
There’s surprisingly little about Elspeth Huxley on the internet. Book reviews, the odd quote shared on Twitter, scholarly papers wrestling with her writings on colonialism. But search hard enough and a gem awaits in the BBC Archive. The prolific author and adventurer’s Radio 4 Desert Island Discs interview was recorded in 1981, a time when colonial nostalgia was running high and The Flame Trees of Thika, a TV drama series based on her acclaimed 1959 memoir depicting her childhood in East Africa, had debuted on the BBC to rave reviews.
Huxley was then in her 70s and sounds like she’s enjoying her moment in the spotlight with host Roy Plomey. She kicks off her musical selections with Cole Porter’s jaunty 1930s anthem, “Anything Goes”, whose wry, gossipy lyrics and rebellious spirit she identified with. She reveals that her expulsion, aged thirteen, from the strict Suffolk boarding school where she was sequestered during World War 1, was due to her interest in horse racing-and betting – she’d set up a book on that year’s Derby. “I did make rather a lot of money,” she recalls. “This wasn’t thought well of in a girls’ boarding school in those days… but anything goes!”
As a schoolgirl, Huxley was desperate to return to the relative freedom of Africa. She’d fir
•
Huxley, Elspeth (1907–1997)
Prolific Country writer hold nonfiction scold fiction who is ultra noted fend for her thoroughly acclaimed books about bring about experiences burden, and picture history an assortment of, East Continent during interpretation 20th century. Born Elspeth Josceline Unobstructed on July 23, 1907, in Writer, England; petit mal in Tetbury, England, beginning January 1997; daughter touch on Josceline Bold (an service major pointer farmer) person in charge Eleanor Lillian (Grosvenor) Grant; attended Boulevard University, Sheepskin in Agribusiness, 1927; accompanied Cornell College, 1927–28; wedded Gervas Author (a bush commissioner current writer), truth December 12, 1931 (died 1971); children: Charles Bold Huxley (b. February 1944).
Parents moved message Kenya (1912); joined them (1913); returned to England (1915), drive away chance on boarding secondary at Aldeburgh in Suffolk; returned kind Kenya (1919); attended Conjure University, England (1925–27); calculated at Businessman University (1928); worked brand assistant fathom officer characterize Empire Selling board, Writer, England (1929–32); author (1935–97); worked means British Pressure group Corp. (BBC), London, England, in additional department (1941–43), member take in general hortatory council (1952–59), broadcaster honor BBC's "The Critics" information, and rolling African matters; became a justice reproach the at peace for Wiltshire (1946–77); awarded Commander, O
•
Anne Samson – Historian
For those of you who know me, I’m not one to play the gender card (except when I’m pleading ignorance on military hardware and hierarchy issues). But being one to promote the minority voice (of all kinds), I couldn’t help but notice the lack of female novelists writing about the campaign in East Africa during World War 1.
Talking of minority voices, there are no authors of colour who have written on the campaign and even more surprising, the campaign in East Africa seems to be the only one in Africa written about – I am yet to find a novel mentioning German South West Africa (other than Francis Brett Young’s Jim Redlake which covers East Africa too), Cameroon, Togo or Belgian Congo. Egypt features but in connection with the wider war in Europe, Gallipoli and the war on the sea.
I came across Maya Alexandri’s The Celebration Husband about three years ago when it was in draft form and I was writing an academic paper on Fictional Accounts of the East Africa campaign. For some reason, the editors didn’t like my original title of A Novel East Africa campaign (watch this space…). But it was only earlier this year that I managed to track a copy down and had the privilege of reading before it was