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Kenya’s Happy Valley Set
The British Empire was frightfully good fun, don’t you know, but mostly just for the country’s dissolute upper crust
The Wanjohi Valley in Kenya’s Highlands was a favourite place for aristocratic Brits settle.
What’s not to like: fabulous climate, lots of African servants available to pamper the idle wealthy, plenty of lions and other big game to kill, and more earls, baronets, countesses, and barons than you could shake a polo stick at.
A Cast of Scoundrels
The people who came to be known as “The Happy Valley Set” could hardly be called the cream of the crop. They were mostly a bunch of rich wastrels who occupied themselves with parties, bed hopping, and drugs.
They cavorted in the African paradise from about 1924 to 1941.
Here are brief sketches of a few of the characters in this immorality play.
Josslyn Victor Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll, Lord Kilmarnock. He was horsewhipped in public in Nairobi’s railway station by the husband of a woman with whom he had an affair. There were several other cuckolded husbands in line because his lordship had a fondness for married women. Lord Kilmarnock became a member of the British Union of Fascists prior to World War II. In…
