Chapter 6: Sundowners To Sunrise -- Part 1 -- The Cast

Begins with the new couple, the Broughtons, Jock and Diana nee Caldwell, arriving by boat in Mombasa on November 12, 1940. Fleeing England and the war for Kenya, with really no plans except to flee.

And then this: an old friend, Hugh Dickinson, now a lieutenant in the Signal Corps, arranged to have himself transferred to Kenya simply to be closer to Diana! And had arrived only five days previously.

That same day, with their new white lady's maid, Dorothy Wilks (who will play a huge part in later proceedings), the Broughtons flew to Nairobi.

On the same flight was a sadistic, satanic character: John Carberry (more about him later). His wife June waiting at the Nairobi airport. June Carberry and Diana Caldwell Broughton struck up an instant alliance were soon to become "best friends." 

June is important because she was "handmaid" to the romance between Joss and Diana. June would also have known everything.

The story of John Carberry, born John Evans-Freke; 10th Baron and 3rd Baronet Carbery (sic) at the age of six in 1898 (the barony, as opposed to the family name, was spelt with one r).

• developed a violent dislike for his native England
• educated at Trinity, (no Eton history, apparently)
• served in WWI in the Royal Naval Air Service
• 1919: took out American naturalization papers but withdrawn because of bootlegging history
• 1920: Kenya had changed his name by deed poll to John Evans Carberry, dropping his title
• had even acquired an American accent
• first wife divorced him for cruelty in 1919
• second wife: Maia Anderson, another aviatrix; died piloting her plane in 1928; her daughter thought accident was suicide provoked by bullying and cruelty of her husband
• so, think of John Carberry as a stereotypical Nazi and you get the picture

Carberry: now becomes a Nazi sympathizer out of pure anti-English sentiment;

• house at Malindi, an airstrip -- he was a trophy-winning pilot and a bar called the Eden Roc
• owned another house and a ranch at Nyeri called Seremai (Masai: "place of death")
• an historical scene of bloodshed between the Kikuyu and the Masai
• ran his liquor still with his partner, Maxwell Trench; cheap gin, Jamaican rum, crème de menthe, and eau de cologne

1930: Carberry married a third time to June Mosley, the only woman who proved able to stand up to his monstrous (Nazi) behavior.

• at age 17, she couldn't put two words together, but she was very, very pretty (again, without needing to be said)
• drank brandy and soda all day long
• couple used terrible language to each other....terrible and violent rows...
• she had many affairs but Carberry adored his wife, and admired her tenacity
• once he loaded his plane with rocks, and then bombarded the car in which she was riding with her lover
• servants called him by the Masai name, "Msharish" -- the long whip with which oxen are driven --

I will stop here with description of Carberry --

Now we catch up with the Broughtons again.

On  the day of their arrival in Nairobi, November 12th; the Broughtons go to the Muthaiga club where they would stay until they found a house.

Their first guest was Gwladys Delamere, the Mayor of Nairobi.

Broughton knew her in England and considered her a close friend.

Broughton had been absent from Kenya for 13 years. So, that's how "old" he is. Diana, on the other hand, is a naive 22-year-old, "dumb blond" -- Marilyn Monroe caricature.

Gladys claimed the honeymooning couple for dinner as well as lunch; also invited another guest, Broughton's contemporary, Jack Soames, who came in from his farm at Nanyuki

They ordered Bronxes before dinner and champagne.

Almost immediately an up-country journey to introduce Diana to Broughton's old friends:

• Lord Francis Scott -- the leader of the gang thirteen years earlier when Broughton left Kenya
• Mervyn Ridley 
• Soames
• "Boy" and Paula Long

We learn that Diana and Broughton agreed to never sleep in the same room overnight -- page 70

Author mentions "Old Etonians" at this point, p. 70

• "Commander" Soames at Bergeret
• Soames had become very, very strange; a sinister and morbid imagination; had become a voyeur wiht an alarming style, drilling holes in the roof above the guest bedrooms;

Soames' wife Nina Drury very, very aware of this and warned folks to stay away from him.

The famous target shooting story: one morning, bored, nothing else to do, Soames suggested target practice out at his farm;

• Broughton was all in favor
• Diana shot -- usually hit the target; most of Broughton's shots went wide
• foreshadowing the murder 
• writer makes this read like a murder mystery, rather than a "biography"

Page 71:
Broughton and Diana returned to Nairobi around November 25th; Broughton left almost immediately to visit the farm he was interested in, on Lake Naivasha

He was away and missed the Caledonian Ball at the Muthaiga Club on November 30th; that was the first time that Joss Erroll and Diana Broughton met. She had been married for less than one month but when she saw Joss Erroll in his kilt, she fell for him immediately.

Erroll was free, of course. His three marriages in the past, and his affair with Mrs Wirewater was conducted by correspondence, between Nairobi and Cape Town where she had gone to install her children in school.


For six weeks they carried on their affair without telling Broughton. "For the first time in her life, Diana had fallen in love."

Broughton returns two days later, and things go on as usual. He is unaware of the affair.

By the beginning of December, Erroll was at their table for dinner almost every night. Erroll and Broughton seemed to hit it off, liking each other.

Diana had two constant companions (in addition to her husband and her lover): her old friend Hugh Dickinson and a new on, Major Richard (Dickie) Pembroke, had arrived in the course of military duty.

Broughton seemed to actually want Diana to take off with a younger man (p. 73).

December 5: Broughtons move from the club into their house at Karen, a suburb of Nairobi, named after Baroness Blixen

• 22 acres of groudn
• 15 servants
• Wilks was in charge
• head boy: Abdullah bin Ahmed

Now we get into the timeline leading up to the murder so I will move to a new stand-along post.

Page 73.

Remember, re-capping, Diana and Broughton married on November 5, 1940.

Arrived in Mombasa, Kenya, on the coast, by boat, on November 12, 1940.

Flew to Nairobi.

Chapter 5: A Spell in Masai Country

Chapter on how Broughton ends up marrying Diana. 

Opens with a quote from Cyril Connolly:

Such rich men with absentee wives may be revived only by a successful love affair. ....

Begins with the Delves Broughtons --

• began coming to Kenya on hunting safaris soon after the Armistice (WWI)
• Sir Jock Delves Broughton's first wife: Vera
• mighty huntress and adventuress
• London's Harley Street physician recommended Jock Broughton go to Kenya as cure for his severe headaches; physician: Sir Farquhar Buzzard
• Broughton: a "war" dodger back in 1914; blamed it on "heat stroke" that he couldn't board sea-going transport
• 1923: bought a coffee plantation in Kenya
• 1940: 57 years old, returning to Kenya with a new wife
• story of Broughton, chapter 5
• born 1883
• born into the protected, leisured world of racing
• into the big league of landowning families
• his father, the 10th Baronet, owned three houses:
• Doddington Park in Cheshire -- the family seat
• Broughton Hall in Staffordshire
• 6 Hill Street in Mayfair, London
• 34,000 acres of land; vast estate mostly of prime Cheshire farming which would now be worth something over £70 million

Eton, poor student

• always held a grudge; felt he was being mistreated by father, stepbrother, stepsister after father remained; mother had died when he was two years old
• crammer's after Eton for some force-fed tutoring
• joined the Irish Guards in 1902

1913: married Vera Boscawen, impoverished branch of a good family;

• bigger than life; adventuress; hated everybody; going to get as much out of life as possible; probably despited Jock but found his money comforting

1914: Jock's father dies; he now has a princely income with the houses and the acres

August 12, 1914: Irish Guards sailed for France; this is the story where he feigned sunstroke and dodged war; his unit suffered incredibly bad casualties;

Retired from the army in 1919, with a 50 percent disability pension;

• limped; arthritic right hand with weak grip -- foreshadowing the murder
• subject to bouts of confusion and amnesia

now began his 20 years of this 36-year-old Baronet

• sold land to raise cash; always worried about running out of money

Vera becomes a big-game huntress

• they go to Kenya together in 1919 - 1920
• went back again in 1923 and met Broughton's old school friend, Jack Soames, who had settled in Nanyuki
• Broughton bought the Spring Valley coffee estate near Nairobi

1928: again in Kenya, he met the Earl of Erroll at Muthaiga

• stayed with Lord Delamere and his wife Gwladys at Soysambu (index says Soysambu first mentioned on page 249; in fact, first mentioned here -- or earlier) -- not previously mentioned by me until this chapter of note-taking; first mentioned on page 16, Delamere and his cattle estate;

Skipping ahead to page 57:

• Vera: loved life; more and more safaris, world travels; close friend Walter Guinness, becomes Lord Moyne in 1932, he had been the 3rd son of the Earl of Iveagh;
• Jock: grew bored
• they grew apart

Jock's son: Evelyn

• Evelyn and Jock did not get along at all

Jock's boredom came to an end in 1935, page 59

• Jock met 22-year-old Diana Caldwell;
• Cyril Connolly fascinated by Diana Caldwell;

Diana Caldwell:

• socialite
• aviatrix
• danced in London
• hunted in Warwickshire
• flew her own plane to Le Touquet, Vienna and Budapest
• her father a gambler and little else after leaving Eton
• Diana had been briefly married to a playboy musician, Vernon Motion
• divorced him for adultery soon after the marriage

p. 59

At this point, I'm going to skip ahead, come back to this later, but I want to move along.

Page 63:

1938: Broughton and Vera made a final appearance together at the marriage of their daughter Rosamund to Lord Lovat.

Broughton sold more land, leaving Doddington with an estage of less than 4,000 acres

Rumors: Broughton heavy in debt.

1938: reported two robberies, the Broughton pearls for £17,000, from the glove compartment of Miss Caldwell's car outside a fashionable  restaurant on the Côte d'Azur; the second robbery, a thief broke into Doddington while Broughton was in London and cut three family portraits from their frames, heavily and recently insured.

1939: Lord Moyne's wife died and Vera, who hoped to marry him, began divorce proceedings against Broughton. Broughton was deeply hurt, though he had tolerated her affairs.

Broughton's response: propose to Diana, and to make plans to emigrate to Kenya. 

Diana's life also falling apart. Both Diana and Broughton thought it best to simply flee England.

While en route from South Africa, the divorce decree granted to Vera in London came through. But Broughton's marriage to Diana did not follow immediately.

Cockie Hoogterp, then the Baroness Blixen (Bror Blixen's second wife after Isak Dinesen) met the couple in Johannesburg a few weeks before the ceremony finally took place  ... detected some uncertianty on Diana's part.

Cockie made a diner date with Broughton ....noted some ambivalence on the part of Broughton regarding marrying Diana.

Six weeks before the marriage, Broughton entered into a peculiar contract -- quite separate from their marriage vows. Diana would be granted a divorce if she fell in love with a younger man and wanted a divorce, and he would provide her an annual stipend of £5,000 per year for at least seven years after divorce. He made the agreement because he was so much older than she.

Chapter 4: The Bonny Earl Of Erroll

1928:

• Joss' father died
• Joss becomes the Earl of Erroll
• his marriage to Idina was coming to an end (her closest friend had been Alice de Janzé who had affair with Joss; Alice voted off the island;
• Idina tolerated casual affairs, but not serious romances

Oserian -- see wiki entry; a flower farm;

• Joss now in love with Molly Ramsay-Hill, another married heiress and a beauty (should go without saying); also older than Joss; married to a rancher, Major Cyril Ramsay-Hill, lived at the edge of Lake Naivasha = Oserian, a Moorish-style estate

Story of Ramsay-Hill horsewhipping Joss over the affair -- p. 40.

Mentions that from Oserian/Djinn Palace, it was over a 100 miles to Nairobi.

Joss and Molly tented at Narok on safari.

Molly and Ramsay-Hill divorced; Molly kept the Djinn Palace.

1930: Molly and Erroll married; moved into Djinn Palace (Oserian); now a rose farm; on the beautiful lake;

Description of Djinn Palace begins page 45;
sunken marble bath in the main suite; vomiting guests
financially secure; Molly's estate provided £8,000 per year

Erroll realizes he has some political clout; notes Lord Francis Scott

1934: paid-up member of the British Union of Fascists

Molly expected Joss to become dictator of Kenya

1935: Mussolini invaded Abyssinia

• Joss: drops his membership in the British Union of Fascists
• Joss: elected, age 34, to the Presidency of the Convention of Associations, the "settlers" parliament -- a separate and unofficial rival to the Legislative Council

Eileen Scott: looked more favorably on Joss by this time -- page 46.

By now, Erroll losing interest in his second countess, Molly. Molly unable to get pregnant, afraid of losing Erroll becomes an alcoholic and morphine addict -- p. 47.

Erroll hoped she would die and she did, August 1939.

Flow of money to Erroll stopped. Erroll closed down the house.

Moved to a bungalow in Muthaiga, near the entrance to the Club.

Erroll: broke now, living on credit. His father had left him £100 / year.

Down to Molly's pearls.

Erroll becomes engaged in politics.

1939:
Erroll elected to the Legislative Council, as the member for Kiambu
now opposed appeasement policies of Neville Chamberlain

1940:
Erroll, 39 years old
military secretary of the Colony
joined the Kenya African Rifles with the rank of Captain
head of the Manpower Board
soon marshalling the East African fighting force for the Abyssinian campaing

1940: love affair
with a married woman from Happy Valley whom the author will call Nancy Wirewater -- p. 48.
noon trysts with champagne in the Norfolk Hotel
once caught by Auntie, "having his way with Mrs Wirewater on the billiard table"

Another love affair, another mistress, who never got over Erroll: Gwladys (pronounced Gladys), Lady Delamere, widow of Hugh Delamere.

In 1920, Gwladys had married Sir Charles Markham, six years younger than she, and considered a waster. The marriage lasted seven years with some conspicuous unfaithfulness on both sides.

She married Hugh Delamere in 1928, three years before he died (1931). In 1928 she had traveled to Kenya as the girldfriend of Edward, Prince of Wales on the first of his safaris.

On the Prince's next safari, Gwladys was dropped from the entourage.

By 1940, Gwladys had become somewhat more unbalanced -- from typhoid (?) and unhappiness in love (?) -- p. 49. She was impossible, an exhibitionist, a racist, really, really, really bad.

But, she was the Mayor of Nairobi.

Meanwhile Alice -- remember Alice -- Raymond and Alice at the Gare du Nord -- had been allowed to return to Kenya and she took up residence in Wanjohi Valley.

1932: Alice had married Raymond de Trafford -- five years after the shooting at the Gare du Nord; three months later, at Neuilly, they were separated -- page 50

Never saw each other again:
1939: Raymond jailed for three years for manslaughter
1946: in court for bankruptch

Meanwhile, Alice in the Wanjohi, resumed her life of ease and bouts of depression; lived alone, mostly with her pet eland; and dogs, notably her precious Dachshund "Minnie"

1940: Alice adopted a new friend: Julian "Lizzie" Lezard -- a celebrated figure in London socieity
a compulsive gambler; an inspired buffoon
sent to Kenya by his wife,
men found him an exhausting joke
women were obsessed with him -- a real playboy

Lezard story complete Chapter 4

• playboy in London society
• new friend for Alice (Gare du Nord fame) 
• an inspired buffoon
• a gifted tennis player; came from South Africa with the Davis Cup team
• the privileged outsider, the victim of merciless teasing
• first moneyed woman: Hilda Wardell, Leicestershire
• rode with Quorn and Pytchley (bottom of page 51)
• after several years, Hilda could take no more; divorced amicably;
• she sent Lezard to Kenza without a penny
• he was told that Alice de Trafford, now divorced from Raymond an living in Happy Valley, would look after him
• Alice brought him back to the Wanjhi Valley in her box-body car
• Erroll and Lezard were perfectly matched: the comedian and the Earl, both broke, both mad about women
• Lezard was fascinated by Erroll; and the obvious place to stay was at the center of activity, Erroll's house at Muthaiga

 

Chapter 3: The Fastest Gun In The Gare Du Nord

Begins where chapter 2 left off -- with the marriage of Alice and Frédéric threatened by Josslyn.

Wow, Alice fell in love with Josslyn on first sight; when she arrived in Kenya with her husband in 1925; she was 25; they had been married three years; she had two small daughters

Patricia Bowles became her closest friend.

[Are there two Alices? Alice de Trafford, and Alice de Janzé?]

Alice: the only child of William Silverthorne of Chicago, a rich felt manufacturere of Scots descent, and through her mother she was an heiress to the Armour meat-packing fortune -- p. 39.

All the things Josslyn found irresistible: mysterious, married, and rich.

Alice: madness began in the 1920s; consumptive from birth; an alcoholic (possibly abused by her father); made a ward of her uncle. Black panther for a pet.

Then the story of how she met Comte de Janzé. -- p. 40.

Married, lived in Paris, but a succession of safaris to Kenya. Two daughters, eventually abandoned.

Page 41: Alice de Janzé begins a stormy romance with Raymond de Trafford.

The story of  Alice shooting Raymond at Gare du Nord. Both recovered.

Serious, serious scandal. Finally, Alice "voted off the island."

Chapter 2: Happy Valley

Fu I loved the high cloud and the hill,
Alas, he died of alcohol.
-- Ezra Pound

1923
Josslyn Hay: 22 years old; arrives in Kenya

The introduction of Josslyn Hay by Daphne Fielding, Mercury Presides, c. 1954.

1923: Josslyn had just been sacked from Eton.

The chapter begins with a small biography of Josslyn Hay.

Took/passed the Foreign Office exam, 1922.

1923: falls in love with Idina Gordon, the married woman with whom he eloped to Kenya.''The story of Idina Gordon, p. 30.

Idina had already lived a year in Kenya, but was now with her second husband back in London.

In 1924, Josslyn and Idina elope to Kenya.

Set up home in Slaines, a modest home on the slopes of the Aberdares, names for the castle sold by Joss's grandfather. p. 30.

1925: they moved from Slains to a house in the valley called Clouds.

It was another ten years before she reached the height of her powers.

There, at the Clouds, the Happy Valley legend began, p. 31.

The Idina scandal -- Josslyn Hay -- begins on page 30. Must - read.

She was twice divorced, soon to marry a mere boy (Josslyn) -- eight years difference --

Married in September 1923.

Idina had lived for one year in Kenya with her second husband, now ready to go back to Kenya.

Departed for Kenya, April, 1924.

This date launched the Colony's reputation as a place beyond the reach of society's official censure, and so beyond the pale, although this was tame compared to the scandals that followed.

They set up house on the slopes of the Aberdares. Set up house at Slains, named after the castle sold by Joss's grandfather.

1925: they moved from Slains to a house in the valley called Clouds, -- p. 31.

Some suggest in retrospect Idina's behavior in front of the Somalis contributed to Mau Mau.

Lord Francis Scott frowned on young officers visiting the Wanjohi, or frequent Clouds.

**********************

Erroll later moves to Djinn Palace when he divorces Idina and marries his third wife. 

Chapter 1: The White Immigrants -- June 21, 2020

Lord and Lady Cranworth, 1912, quotes.

One of the earliest settlers. Note the date. In 1941, James Fox had said that the story spanned three decades which would take us back to at least 1911.

Englishmen and Scotsmen.

Chapter 1: great background

History of British colonization of Kenya.

1895.

The great railroad from the coast to the interior. Brits vs Germans.

The Germans from the port city of Tanga.

The Brits from the port city of Mombasa, to Lake Victoria; 180 miles; 5.5 years to build; completed in 1901.

Arab slaving expedition .... p 10.

The labor to build the railway: Indian.

Masai 'Moran' (young warriors). The Masai seemed to respect the railway and the superiority of British weapons.

The lions of Tsavo, held up work for several weeks and seemed for a time to be invincible.

Taru desert, p. 11.

Kongoni, p. 11.

Nairobi: established in 1899.

Nairobi: at the frontier between the Masai and Kikuyu, the last possible rail depot berfore the track climbed 2,000 feet up the Kikuyu escarpment, the eastern wall of the Great Rift Valley. "For anyone looking down into the vast floor of the vlley for the first time, the sheer scale of htelandscape was overpowering -- something quite new to the senses.

Naivasha station: the beginning of the highlands; tea taken before the ride resumes

From there, up to Gilgil and then to Nakuru ...

... after some miles of torn adn red rock, ou emerged into thousands of acres of rolling English parkland ...

.... some of it resembled the west of Scotland ...

wild fig: sacred to the Kikuyu, p. 11

The railroad depleted the Colony's funds. The Commissioner of East Africa, Sir Charles Eliot, hatched a plan to bring products from the interior to the coast to pay for the railroad.

The first wave was very rough, but the second wave: Edwardian aristocracy and the British officer class. However, the first wave did have some peers -- victims of primogeniture, such as Berkeley and Galbraith Cole, younger sons of the Earl of Enniskillen.

Of note: the settlers' unchallenged leader from the turn of the century until his death in 1931, Hugh Cholmondeley, 3rd Baron Delamere...had first set eyes on Kenyz in 1892 ... the story of Lord Delamere... begins on page 12;

Land:

Delamere was granted the first plot

• along the railway line north-west of Kakuru
• at Njoro he began the experiment --- 

distribution of land, chaotic; handled by the Land Office in Nairobi

• 1904: the Norfolk otel was built
• trophy hunters, the "House of Lords,"

British reserve, but Kikuyu land along the British famrs were added to the serserve -- a costly political mistake.

The Rift Valley, where the Masai ran their cattle, was considered unoccupied

English: very, very paranoid about the hot, equatorial sun, p. 14; much on this;

Farming, p. 15

Equator Ranch, Delamere:
by 1906, 160,000 acres
all of it enclosed by 1,000 miles or so of barbed wire fencing
but by 1909 he was broke
forced to sell his estates in Cheshire; borrowed against what remained of the family trust;

1907: Delamere an eccentric-looking figure

Masai and Delamere, p. 16.

Masai cattle, p. 16

Drinking, p. 26:
started soon after midday with pink gins before lunch
gin fizzes in the shade at teatime
cocktails (Bronxes, White Ladies, Trinities) for sundowners
whisky and champagne until the lights went out
1928, p. 27
the year before the crash which drastically thinned out the settler population
the year Josslyn Hay's father died; Josslyn becomes the Earl of Erroll and High Constable of Scotland
he had already lived in Kenya for four years; in the heart of Happy Valley

Introduction -- June 20, 2020

January 24, 1941, about 2:30 a.m. local time, Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll, found dead in his Buick some miles outside of Nairobi.

Great Britain: preoccupied with surviving the Blitz.

Murder occurred the very day that the campaign was launched in Nairobi to remove Mussolini's army from Abyssinia (Ethiopian Empire, current states of Ethiopia and Eritrea). Joss Erroll, the Military Secretary for the colony, put together the military response.

"Happy Valley set": wiki link here. Not said here, but think the second and third sons of British nobility, due to primogeniture. 1920s - 1940s.

Some of the notable members of the Happy Valley set were: The 3rd Baron Delamere and his son and heir The 4th Baron Delamere; Denys Finch Hatton; Sir Jock Delves Broughton and wife Diana Delves Broughton (Diana, Lady Delamere); The 22nd Earl of Erroll; Lady Idina Sackville; Alice, Countess de Janze (cousin of J. Ogden Armour) and her husband Count Frederic de Janzé.

Joke that wore itself out, said so many times: "Are you married or do you live in Kenya?" -- page 2.

With Erroll's murder and the scandal that followed, the spirit of Happy Valley was broken forever. -- page 2.

Murder: 1941. Author says "Happy Valley" stretched back three decades from Joss' death -- 1941 - 30 =   1911.

James Fox and Cyril Connolly, Sunday Times Magazine. In spring, 1969, decided to write the story for the magazine, 28 years after the event.

Their article: "Christmas at Karen."

Cyril Connolly died in 1974; James Fox, after reading his notebooks on Kenya, was stimulated to take another look.

Many of the male characters in the story, including Lord Erroll, had been contemporaries of his at Eton.

Primogeniture: sons of nobility went to Eton.

Eton College: prep school; male only; 13 - 18; boarding school, 7 days/week; three terms each school year.

Cyril Connolly described Eton in Enemies of Promise, c. 1938.

Eton mentioned in passing, talking about Joss, others wearing the red-ochre Somali shawl.

Background -- June 20, 2020

Copyright: 1982 by James Fox. I'm reading the "first American edition."

Two journalist-investigators: Cyril Connolly and James Fox. Cyril Connolly dies. Many years later, James Fox decides to bring closure to this mystery; writes the book.

The acknowledgments conclude with this line: "Above all, my special thanks to Diana, Lady Delamere, for talking to me about the events of 1941." -- J.F., 1982.

First Note -- June 20, 2020

Diana.

Welcome.

I found myself back in my Out of Africa phase in early June, 2020. I have no idea how I got there again. It's possible I was watching Twin Peaks and a synapse shunted me to Out of Africa. I mentioned that on my primary blog and a reader suggested if I enjoyed Out of Africa, I would love White Mischief by James Fox. I had completed re-eading the first three chapters of Karen Blixen's novel by that time, but put it down to start reading James Fox's book. Once I started, I never looked back. I found it amazing on so many levels.

After completing the penultimate chapter, I decided to re-read the book, but take copious notes this time. That's what this blog will be about.