My Colonial Childhood

My Colonial Childhood is a poignant and beautifully observed personal account of the comings and goings of a civil service family in the British Protectorate of Tanganyika before it became known as Tanzania in 1961. The author's ancestors who included a jailbird, a famous poet, missionaries and methodists were ordinary people who did some extraordinary things. With historical hindsight the author realizes that the life she and her two sisters led as children of the British Empire was equally extraordinary. Her description of the social and professional activities of her father and mother casts light on how a small white minority was able to govern a vast alien territory. She gives an amusing account of how her essentially English upbringing and education had to adapt to life in the wilderness. Finally, she laments the emotional dislocation each family member suffered on leaving a beloved Africa for what now felt like an alien Britain.