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Books

The Ghosts of Happy Valley, by Juliet Barnes - review

3 August 2013

9:00 AM

3 August 2013

9:00 AM

The Ghosts of Happy Valley Juliet Barnes

Aurum Press, pp.320, £16.99, ISBN: 9781781310854

Rift Valley, Kenya

The other day when I told the headmaster of a top British public school that I came from Kenya, he quipped, ‘Ah, still living in Happy Valley?’

We will never shake it off, this idea of a Happy Valley in the equatorial highlands where aristocrats supposedly indulged in orgies and drugs — what Cyril Connolly dubbed the three As: Altitude, Alcohol and Adultery.

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Aidan Hartley was born in Nairobi. He is the author of The Zanzibar Chest: A Memoir of Love and War, and The Spectator’s ‘Wild life’ columnist.

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