When I was writing Red Strangers: the White Tribe of Kenya (2005, difficult to get hold of, but now available on Kindle) I came across references to the shady ways of some of the early white tourists. They came to Kenya to bag animal trophies, but the animals were not always co-operative in this endeavour. Some tourists killed lions with strychnine and then put bullet holes in them to pretend they had shot them. The early white hunters (John Boyes, Samaki Salmon and Mguu Anderson, for example) made a living out of ivory and rhino horn. They suffered considerable discomfort – near Lukenya the ticks caused unbearable irritation. Testse flies bit through clothing, and bamboo hairs caused dreadful itching. There were many anecdotes I could not fit into the book. Sir Charles Markham used to tell a story about the coming of Kenya’s independence. Markham was talking to Alan Lennox-Boyd, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies. Lennox-Boyd was...