The Africa House

by Christina Lamb

The book is subtitled:
The True Story of an English Gentleman and His African Dream.

Originating with a chance encounter in 1996 with Gore-Browne's grandson in Lusaka, Christina Lamb uses Gore-Browne's diaries, letters, personal papers and photographs as well as those of his family, and interviews with family and friends, as its sources, and recreates Gore-Browne’s life from 1914 to 1967.
It is the account of an English gentleman and his African dream. The house referred to in the title is Gore-Browne's country estate built in 1923 in the last decades of the British Empire in Northern Rhodesia : Shiwa House is a gorgeous manor, modelled on an England ancestral home in this remote outpost of British colonial Northern Rhodesia - now Zambia - in the African bush, complete with uniformed servants, daily muster parades and rose gardens.

• Lamb’s narrative not only reconstructs Shiwa House’s original glory but details the intimate world of its builder, Sir Stewart Gore-Browne, whom the first President of Zambia Kenneth Kaunda summed up as "one of the most visionary people in Africa: “he was born an English gentleman and died a Zambian gentleman.” Kaunda honoured him with a state funeral in 1967.

Lamb recounts:
• The beauty of the unspoiled countryside, its teeming wildlife, Gore-Browne’s love of hunting, his friendly relations with locals and his eccentric attempt to model his estate on that of his cherished Aunt Ethel in England.

• Browne’s romantic affections for the beautiful unconventional Ethel Locke King, however nearly twenty years his senior, married and his aunt

• his equally perverse unhappy marriage to the 25 years younger daughter of his first love Lorna, the only other woman he had ever cared for, whom had married another many years earlier. It seemed he had found companionship and maybe love - but the Africa house was his dream and it would be a hard one to share.

• his largely unsuccessful political campaigns; and his wholehearted support of Zambia’s independence.

• when early 1914, Gore-Browne first saw Shiwa Ngandu: the "Lake of the Royal Crocodiles" in what is today northern Zambia, and immediately recognized it as the kingdom he had dreamed of.

• World War I intervened, but in 1920 he was back in Africa, the owner of 23,000 acres, at work on the house and the model village he had so long planned. Food, furniture, and all other necessities had to travel by land and canoe more than 400 miles from the nearest rail halt.

• how extraordinary Gore-Browne's overly ambitious achievement was. In a place where lions and crocodile regularly ate the unwary and leopards peeked in the windows, he built a grand English ancestral home, surrounded by gardens and orchards.

• Gore-Browne's commitment to Zambia's independence and to African education, as well as his friendship with the newly independent nation's first president, Kenneth Kaunda.

• a story full of passion, adventure and final betrayal.

Christina Lamb has been one of Britain’s leading foreign correspondent for almost 20 years. Educated at Oxford and Harvard, she is an expert on Afghanistan and Pakistan which she has reported on since 1987. Her postings have included South Africa, Brazil and Washington and she is a frequent commentator on BBC, CNN and Sky News.
She is the author of six books, including the bestselling “I Am Malala” with Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, and is a patron of Afghan Connection which builds schools in Afghanistan. She lives with her husband and son in Portugal and London.

In our group there where different opinions.
We did all wonder though at the complexity of the man:

Stewart liked Africans, especially the Bemba people, Northern Rhodesia’s largest tribe : …”masculine, proud and loyal!”
He greatly admired the tribe … and learned their language.
He dreamed of creating a place where blacks and whites would live in harmony.

In his letters to Ethel he remarks:
• how miserably ashamed one is of the doings of white men out here …
• He assured his aunt and uncle that he was not about to start urging the natives to copy white man’s ways …
On the other hand however, he is arrogant:
With his minton china with family crest, shining silver … … - “an effort to set a good example to the native”
• “…stuff that really mattered in life: fine wines, port, cigars, good books ….”
• “Hard to believe sometimes what the world is coming to: the thought giving women the vote was going too far ..…”. Although his life had been dominated by strong women: grandmother Harriet, mother Helenor and aunt Ethel …

He had a fierce temper:
• “beating seems to have become a regular necessity to keep my men in line”.
• “That is the problem of people not used to the discipline of public school or regular army training”.

Steward Gore-Browne was nevertheless ahead of his time in understanding that the white man should and could not be the rulers of Africa, that the governments should be run by native people. He spent much of his life trying to achieve that goal.

Our group appreciated the great work Christina Lamb did before writing this book. It must have taken ages of leafing through the old letters, journals and accounts from way back.
We thought it an interessant account: the author has rescued from oblivion the life story of an astonishing man, an astonishing marriage, an astonishing house …
We concluded with these reflections:
Did we like the man or did we not. At least we admired his determination to achieve what he did.
Was his fate determined by his parents' lack of affection and appreciation for him?
Was Stewart Gore-Browne an obsessed person or a passionate man?

Loeky Borloo