Olga in Kenya
Repressing the Irrepressible

Publisher: Pen Press
ISBN: 1905203748
Price:   £9.99 plus £2 post and packing in the UK, £5 overseas

Some people achieve far more than their time on earth should allow, making a real difference to many, yet unrecognised by most.

Olga Baillie-Grohman is one such person. The summary of her life reads as an extraordinary catalogue of events - born in Austria within hours of Adolf Hitler and Charlie Chaplin, she married a Kenyan soldier-settler and was recruited to British Intelligence work. Her second marriage to a senior Government official enabled her to fulfil many missions in life - elected as the first female member of the Nairobi City Council followed by the Kenyan Legislative Council, Olga used her standing to advance better urban housing for African's, education for the continent's women and as a representative to the smaller coffee farmers.

Olga's story is one that should not be forgotten as it is a guiding light for putting the world to rights and an inspiration to others.

Notes from the back cover
Brought up in an Austrian castle, daughter of a writer who was a friend of Theodore Roosevelt as well as a pioneer of wildlife national parks in the U.S.A. and of the Kootenay irrigation scheme in British Columbia, educated at an English girls school, debutante at the British court, married at 23 to a soldier-settler farmer in Kenya, widowed at 24 when her husband was killed in the German East African Campaign in the First World War, recruited by Von Meinertzhagen for British Intelligence work, novice farmer, married again to a senior government official, first woman to be elected to the Nairobi City Council, pioneer of better urban housing for Africans, mother of three girls, coffee farmer and building contractor, elected member of the Kenya Legislative Council in place of the murdered Lord Erroll, responsible for the appointment of the first Director of Women’s Education in Kenya, advocate of rights and better educational facilities for African women, representative of the smaller coffee farmers.

Reviewers Comments
“ Elizabeth Watkins’s biography of her mother, Olga Watkins is, like its subject, lively and stimulating…..We are left with an indelible impression of a pioneering woman of the British Empire at its best – compassionate, caring, confident and didactic…  Elizabeth Watkins writes with brio, making us turn the pages to find out what the next scheme up Olga’s sleeve will be. By the end we are left feeling that this extraordinary woman died too young". – Dr. Christine Nicholls in Jambo No.83 Spring 2006

“ Elizabeth Watkins’s biography of her mother, Olga Watkins is, like its subject, lively and stimulating…..We are left with an indelible impression of a pioneering woman of the British Empire at its best – compassionate, caring, confident and didactic…  Elizabeth Watkins writes with brio, making us turn the pages to find out what the next scheme up Olga’s sleeve will be. By the end we are left feeling that this extraordinary woman died too young. – Dr. Christine Nicholls in Jambo No.83 Spring 2006 

“Elizabeth Watkins has written another engrossing biography of a life in Kenya in the colonial era. ……Olga’s Kenya is almost forgotten now as a small part of Africa’s colonial history. Fortunately she left a treasure house of letters and documents which her daughter has marshalled to give a vivid record of Europeans in Africa, their tragedies and their successes. Thank goodness those papers were preserved and Elizabeth Watkins was able to present them to us in a coherent form. The book will be invaluable to the reader and historian interested in Kenya’s immediate past.” - Sir John Johnson in The Overseas Pensioner No. 91, April 2006

Some Readers Comments
“I am sitting by the fire reading Olga … and alternately laughing and crying”

“I have just read Olga…what a remarkable woman, and how fortunate to have her life told with such a combination of scholarship, literary skill, and love. It was a huge pleasure to read… Really a  treasure of a book”

“I am just back from four weeks in Florida…during that time I read Olga in Kenya and wanted to e mail to say how much I enjoyed it. What a wonderful, amazingly innovative woman… and what an exotic life. Quite different from most of us. I am amazed at the amount of fine detail of events and people…I hope you are selling lots of copies, as the book (and she) deserve a wide readership”

“I just finished Olga this morning. I absolutely loved it. What experiences…and Olga, my goodness, very few women today are as brave. I thought I was liberated when I built my own house in 1978 as there were very few women carpenters and contractors at that time. But I was in California USA.”

“Its absolutely fabulous! I can just imagine the tremendous effort that went into collecting the papers and other information from so many different places; the diaries, letters, the Legco material and so on: and then working it into a meaningful  chronology and story. It’s just fascinating.  I’ve loved it. There’s a rather extended list of people waiting to read it when I finish. No doubt you would rather people bought it”

“When you pick it up, you can’t put it down”

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