Aurum Press

The Happy Valley set’s notoriety was sealed in 1941 with the still unsolved murder of the Earl of Errol. Juliet Barnes explores Happy Valley in a remarkable archaeological quest to find the homes and haunts of the extraordinary and vanished characters. With the help of African guides, and the memories of elderly expats, she brings new insights to their gilded but frantic lives, and updates the area’s traumatic history from the Mau Mau atrocities in the 50s to the forest and animal devastations of today.

John Baxter was 91, when his book about his experiences in Japanese POW camps was published.  Royal Engineer Baxter was captured and imprisoned in Indonesia in 1942.  He was starved and beaten, and contracted malaria, dysentery and diphtheria, for which he received no treatment.  For the last two years of the War, he worked in the hard labour mines in Japan, where, in August 1945, he felt the direct blast of the atomic bomb falling on Nagasaki 40 miles away.