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The
Africa House In the last decades of the British Empire, Stewart Gore-Browne built himself a feudal paradise in Northern Rhodesia. The House of the Royal Crocodiles was a sprawling country estate modelled on the finest stately homes in England, complete with uniformed servants, daily muster parades, rose gardens and lavish dinners finished off with vintage port in the library. He wanted to share it with the love of his life, the beautiful unconventional Ethel Locke King, one of the first women to drive and fly. She, however, was nearly twenty years his senior, married and his aunt. Lorna, the only other woman he had ever really cared about, had married another many years earlier. Then he met Lorna’s orphaned daughter, so like her mother that he thought he had seen a ghost. It seemed he had found love and companionship. But the Africa House was his dream, and set against the backdrop of the dying days of empire, it became an increasingly hard dream to share. Based on his extensive diaries and correspondence, this portrait of a fascinating and complex man – a colonialist who beat his servants yet was one of the only white men to support independence, a stiff Englishman with deep passions – is a masterpiece of biography and storytelling. ‘It
evokes a bygone age with a poignancy almost too painful to read;
perfect in every way.’ Reviews
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