Africa House

US: Penguin UK, 2004. Paperback. Very Good. Christina Lamb's The Africa House is the bestselling account of an English gentleman and his African dream. In the last decades of the British Empire, Stewart Gore-Brown build himself a feudal paradise in Northern Rhodesia; a sprawling country estate modelled on the finest homes of England, complete with uniformed servants, daily muster parades and rose gardens. He wanted to share it with the love of his life, the beautiful unconventional Ethel L ocke King, one of the first women to drive and fly. She, however, was nearl y twenty years his senior, married and his aunt. Lorna, the only other woma n he had ever cared for, had married another many years earlier. Then he me t Lorna's orphaned daughter, so like her mother that he thought he had seen a ghost. It seemed he had found companionship and maybe love - but the Afr ica house was his dream and it would be a hard one to share. From a world o f British colonials in Africa, with their arrogance and vision, to the fina l sad denouement. Leaving the once majestic house abandoned and a forgotten ruin of a bygone age Christina Lamb evokes a story full of passion, advent ure and final betrayal. 'The story she tells is in equal measure absorbing, affecting and bizarre' Sunday Telegraph 'An amazing story of high hopes, l ost love and ruined lives' Sunday Times Christina Lamb is an award-winning journalist. Currently roving Foreign Affairs Correspondent for the Sunday T imes, she has been a foreign correspondent for almost 20 years, living in P akistan, Brazil and South Africa first for the Financial Times then the Sun day Times. She is the author of the best-selling book The Africa House as w.