My Fantasy Girlfriend - Elspeth Huxley

Well, the too-wonderful-for-words Moonrat is a hard act to follow; and, since she is the only one of my 'Fantasy Girlfriends' with whom I am actually on corresponding terms, I wouldn't want to risk making her jealous - so I suppose I'd better install her as Permanent Honorary Fantasy Girlfriend-in-Chief.

However, the series must go on. And I figure Moonie will be less likely to get in a huff with me if I follow her with a literary idol.

Elspeth Huxley was a marvellous British writer of the last century. She spent most of her childhood - and much of her subsequent long life (she lived to be nearly 90) - in Africa. She wrote some charming fiction about the continent (like the amusing title above; I don't think I've ever seen a photograph of her, and can't find any online now), as well as a number of non-fiction books about wildlife conservation there and biographies of a trio of great British heroes, Capt. Scott, Livingstone, and Florence Nightingale. However, she is perhaps best known for The Flame Trees of Thika, a lovely memoir about her first experience of living in Kenya as a young girl. This was made into a rather good TV series in the UK back in the late '70s or early '80s (for once, an ITV rather than a BBC production), with a gorgeous theme tune - but, alas, I can't find that online either. She was splendidly played by a very promising young actress called Holly Aird, and impressed - even at the age of 10 - as a quite exceptionally intelligent, idealistic, and spirited person.

One of the things that most attracted me to her - apart from her writing, which is really very, very good; and apart from the many other worthy things she achieved in her life - was an anecdote I heard on a BBC Radio tribute to her back in the '80s (it might possibly have been Desert Island Discs): I think she was telling the story herself - she continued to be a wonderfully fluent raconteuse, even at quite an advanced age - about how she had once been expelled from school... for running a book on the Derby! I hope I am not mistaken about this. It is a very long time ago that I heard this story; and I had thought that it had been an English boarding school that she was thrown out of (one of the big names like Roedean), but online biographies seem to suggest that all of her schooling was in Nairobi. As I so often say, print the legend. Show me a girl who likes horse-racing, can understand mathematics, and doesn't give a damn about silly old rules, and, well, I'm hers for life! And if she can write too.....