Plot
Robin Grant (David Robb), his wife Tilly (Hayley Mills) and daughter Elspeth (Holly Aird) move to British East Africa (now called Kenya) to set up a coffee plantation. They meet Piet Roos (Morgan Sheppard), a Boer big game hunter, and Njombo, a native who goes to work for them. The Grants face many travails in getting established, but these improve after they hire another native, Sammy, as the headman of the plantation.
Hereward (Nicholas Jones) and Lettice Palmer (Sharon Maughan) move to the area. There is a fight between Roos and Sammy. Then Njombo kills Kimon, who was the Palmers' headman. As a result, his chief strips him of his property and Sammy marries the girl Njombo wanted.
While her parents and the Palmers are on a trip to Nairobi, Elspeth has a very interesting New Year's Eve party with Mrs. Nimmo, who tends to the area's medical needs, and a newcomer to the area, Alec Wilson.
A horse trader and safari leader, Ian Crawford (Ben Cross), arrives in the area. He is infatuated with Lettice Palmer, who gives a pony to Elspeth. We learn Lettice left her first husband to elope with Hereward. Elspeth develops an intense dislike for Hereward Palmer after he shoots a baby antelope on a hunt.
Sammy arranges for a curse to be put on Njombo, and it literally takes an “Act of God” to get it lifted.
After the railroad reaches Thika, Lettice gets a piano, but during a party held to celebrate its arrival, a leopard kills one of her dogs. During the hunt to get it, Hereward kills the leopard but is almost killed by its mate; he is saved by Roos.
The Palmers, Tilly, and Crawford go on a safari, during which Lettice and Crawford have an affair. Hereward and Crawford are about to have a brawl when Crawford's servant stabs Hereward. As a result, Crawford leaves and Lettice stays with Hereward.
On 4 August 1914, the Grants learn war has been declared on Germany. Robin joins the army, while Tilly becomes a nurse and Elspeth goes to school, where she is bullied for being a know-it-all. She runs away back to Thika. Ian Crawford is killed in the war. Robin is transferred to France so all the Grants leave Africa and return to Europe for the duration.
Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The name is derived from the Maasai phrase Enkare Nairobi, which translates to 'place of cool waters', a reference to the Nairobi River which flows through the city. The city proper had a population of 4,397,073 in the 2019 census. The city is commonly referred to as The Green City in the Sun.
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley was a British evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century modern synthesis. He was secretary of the Zoological Society of London (1935–1942), the first Director of UNESCO, a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund, the president of the British Eugenics Society (1959-1962), and the first President of the British Humanist Association.
Sir John Mills was an English actor who appeared in more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades. He excelled on camera as an appealing British everyman who often portrayed guileless, wounded war heroes. In 1971, he received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Ryan's Daughter.
Mogambo is a 1953 Technicolor adventure/romantic drama film directed by John Ford and starring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, and Grace Kelly, and featuring Donald Sinden. Shot on location in Equatorial Africa, with a musical soundtrack consisting entirely of actual African tribal music recorded in the Congo, the film was adapted by John Lee Mahin from the play Red Dust by Wilson Collison. The picture is a remake of Red Dust (1932), which was set in Vietnam and also starred Gable in the same role.
The Benin Expedition of 1897 was a punitive expedition by a British force of 1,200 men under Sir Harry Rawson. It came in response to the ambush and slaughter of a 250 strong party led by British Acting Consul General James Phillips of the Niger Coast Protectorate. Rawson's troops captured Benin City, bringing to an end slavery and human sacrifice in Benin, and indeed the Kingdom of Benin itself, which was eventually absorbed into colonial Nigeria.
Hayley Catherine Rose Vivien Mills is a British actress. The daughter of Sir John Mills and Mary Hayley Bell and younger sister of actress Juliet Mills, she began her acting career as a child and was hailed as a promising newcomer, winning the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer for her performance in the British crime drama film Tiger Bay (1959), the Academy Juvenile Award for Disney's Pollyanna (1960) and Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress in 1961.
Elspeth Joscelin Huxley CBE was an English writer, journalist, broadcaster, magistrate, environmentalist, farmer, and government adviser. She wrote over 40 books, including her best-known lyrical books, The Flame Trees of Thika and The Mottled Lizard, based on her youth in a coffee farm in British Kenya. Her husband, Gervas Huxley, was a grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley and a cousin of Aldous Huxley.
True at First Light is a book by American novelist Ernest Hemingway about his 1953–54 East African safari with his fourth wife Mary, released posthumously in his centennial year in 1999. The book received mostly negative or lukewarm reviews from the popular press and sparked a literary controversy regarding how, and whether, an author's work should be reworked and published after his death. Unlike critics in the popular press, Hemingway scholars generally consider True at First Light to be complex and a worthy addition to his canon of later fiction.
The Huxley family is a British family; several of its members have excelled in science, medicine, arts and literature. The family also includes members who occupied senior positions in the public service of the United Kingdom.
David Robb is a Scottish actor.
Thika is an industrial town and commerce hub in Kiambu County, Kenya, lying on the A2 road 42 kilometres (26 mi), northeast of Nairobi, near the confluence of the Thika and Chania Rivers. Although Thika town is administratively in Kiambu County, the greater Thika area comprising residential areas such as Bendor estate, Maporomoko, Thika Greens, Thika Golden Pearl, Bahati Ridge, and Thika Sports Club, among others, are within Murang'a County. Thika has a population of 279,429 which is growing rapidly, as is the entire greater Nairobi area. Its elevation is approximately 1,631 metres (5,351 ft).
The Happy Valley set was a group of mostly British and Anglo-Irish aristocrats and adventurers who settled in the "Happy Valley" region of the Wanjohi Valley, near the Aberdare mountain range, in colonial Kenya between the 1920s and the 1940s. During the 1930s, the group became infamous for its hedonistic, decadent lifestyles and exploits amid reports of drug use and sexual promiscuity.
Imogen Holly Aird is an English television actress known for playing forensic pathologist Frankie Wharton in the BBC1 drama series Waking the Dead, having previously starred in productions such as Soldier Soldier and the 1997 film Fever Pitch alongside Colin Firth.
Hugh Cholmondeley, 3rd Baron Delamere,, styled The Honourable from birth until 1887, was a British peer. He was one of the first and most influential British settlers in Kenya.
Kenyan literature describes literature which comes from Kenya. Kenya has a long oral and written literary tradition, primarily in English and Swahili, the two official languages of the country.
Flame in the Streets is a 1961 film directed by Roy Ward Baker and based on the 1958 play Hot Summer Night by Ted Willis. It opened at the Odeon Leicester Square in London's West End on 22 June 1961.
Sammy Going South is a 1963 British adventure film directed by Alexander Mackendrick, photographed by Erwin Hillier and starring Edward G. Robinson, Fergus McClelland and Constance Cummings.
The Stanley Hotel is a five-star hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. It is the oldest hotel in the city, having been established in 1902 by English businesswoman Mayence Bent, when the city was a railway halt. It is named after Sir Henry Morton Stanley, a Welsh explorer who is best known for his explorations of central Africa and his successful search for missionary and explorer David Livingstone.
