Oscar from Africa

The Biography of O.F. Watkins
By Elizabeth Watkins
Price £24.50 [$39.50 USA] plus £2 post and packing in the UK, £5 overseas

One of the select band of undergraduates who, as ‘Founders Kin’, passed through All Souls College, Oxford, Oscar Watkins had a remarkable career. He was a Bisley shot and a hockey ‘Blue’ for Oxford University; a cavalry trooper in the Boer War; a magistrate on the Kenya Slave Courts which freed the slaves early in this century; a commandant of the 400,000 – strong Carriers Corps in the East African campaign in the First World War; Acting Kenya Chief Native Commissioner and Provincial Commissioner; and the first editor of a Swahili newspaper which under his editorship gained the largest circulation of any paper in Africa.

Absolutely incorruptible and one of the last of a breed now nearing extinction, he strove unceasingly to protect the interests of the African peoples. Resisting pressures from European settlers for more labour to be made available to work on their farms, and for more land to be made available for European settlement, he found himself on a collision course with the settlers and their fiery leader Lord Delamere, and a Governor who was inclined to take their part. Refusing to be ‘pushed upstairs’ to the Governorship of another colony, his principles were not negotiable and his career in Kenya suffered.

This is both a very readable book and a scholarly work and is essential reading for all historians of East Africa as well as good reading for the visitor to Kenya, and all who love that country.

"His daughter, has furnished him with an eloquent and fitting memorial that will surely bring him, fifty years after his death, the recognition that eluded him in his lifetime" Elspeth Huxley

"This fascinating book….the story of a very remarkable man, well researched and engagingly told….particularly to be commended for the detachment and balance with which it records the events…" Sir John Johnson in Oxford Nov 1995

"Essential reading for everyone interested in the colonial period in Kenya and the operation of the Colonial Service" Dr Penelope Hetherington in the African Studies Association of Australasia Newsletter 1995

"Fluently and not uncritically told… a partial but attractive picture of Watkins both as colonial official and humane liberal-minded man" Dr David Killingray in African Affairs

"Elizabeth Watkins has followed up her fascinating Jomo’s Jailor of two years ago with another book of keen insight into the operations of colonial administration in Kenya" Brigadier M.B. Page in the Journal of the Anglo Somali Society, Summer 1995

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