The Africa House: The True Story of an English Gentleman and His African Dream [Hardcover]

Christina Lamb (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 14, 2004

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 Locke King, one of the first women to drive and fly. She, however, was nearly twenty years his senior, married and his aunt. Lorna, the only other woman he had ever cared for, had married another many years earlier. Then he met 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 Africa house was his dream and it would be a hard one to share.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Shiwa House is a magnificent, dilapidated rural estate in Zambia: built in the early years of the 20th century and resembling an English ancestral home, it was "completely... out of place in this remote corner of the African bush," writes Lamb, a journalist and author of the highly praised Sewing Circles of Herat. Her narrative, spanning more than half of the 20th century, not only reconstructs Shiwa House's original glory but details the intimate world of its builder, the egotistical Sir Stewart Gore-Browne, whom President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia honored with a state funeral in 1967. Concentrating on the evolution of Gore-Browne's nostalgically conceived estate in a remote outpost of British colonial Northern Rhodesia, Lamb evokes 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. Lamb recounts Gore-Browne's romantic affections for his beautiful, older married aunt and his equally perverse marriage to the much younger daughter of an old flame; his largely unsuccessful political campaigns; and his unexpectedly wholehearted support of Zambian independence. The narrative is engaging and well crafted, although Lamb's attempts at dramatizing her subjects' emotional lives sometimes read like a romance novel, and her narrow focus on the house's history obscures the wider context of waning British empire. 16 pages of b&w photos, maps.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In what is now Zambia but what was then Northern Rhodesia, Sir Stewart Gore-Browne built Shiwa House in 1923, a gorgeous, sprawling English manor that employed hundreds. With scintillating prose and a vivid imagination, Lamb re-creates Gore-Browne's life from 1914 to 1967, and what a life it was: the struggles to make the estate support itself; Gore-Browne's inexhaustible love of Africa and his work for its people, shot through always with his unbending attitudes about class and place. And within this tall, monocled Englishman, there was such personal passion: he loved a woman whose daughter he later married because she so looked like her mother. The real love of his life, however, was his aunt, to whom he wrote almost daily for decades. It is those letters and his diary that enable Lamb to re-create menus, activities, weather, and upheavals in mesmerizing detail. Today's bloggers have nothing on this first white man to become a Zambian citizen as Lamb effortlessly weaves his words into her narrative to form an absolutely compelling tapestry. Black-and-white photographs not seen. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1st US Edition edition (December 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060735872
• ISBN-13: 978-0060735876
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #260,789 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #10 in Books > History > Africa > Zambia
  • #40 in Books > History > Africa > Southern Africa

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book you can't put down., March 13, 2004

By 

Prisca Molotsi (nagoya, aichi Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Africa House (Paperback)

I started reading this book last night at 8:15pm and couldn't put it down until I finished it at 4:20 this morning. I am bleary-eyed but absolutely happy that I found this gem in a bookstore in South Africa last week. It is an absolutley capitvating book and very well researched. Ms Lamb has a fascinating way of writing...you can almost see the wild animals, smell the scents, enjoy the beauty....in short, this book will mersmerize you. I was born in post-colonial Zambia and lived there for a while, that was the reason I bought the book, but I can assure you even if you haven't been out of your hometown (wherever that may be), you will love this book!!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Man Ahead of His Time, April 8, 2005

By 

Patricia Kramer (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Africa House: The True Story of an English Gentleman and His African Dream (Hardcover)

The descriptions and pictures of the English manor house set in Africa were interesting, but what I found fascinating was the complex character of Stewart Gore-Browne. He clearly loved the beauty of the land of Africa and its people, yet he was continually frustrated and angered by both. He treated his workers extremely well, loaned them money, helped with education, yet he also beat them.

Gore-Browne was 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 the native people. He spent much of his life trying to achieve that goal. As others have said, it is a wonder that his name is not well known. Christina Lamb shone light on a story that should be told.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Captivating!!, April 15, 2004

By 

[e-mail] (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Africa House (Paperback)

Wow! What a fascinating story. I have never been to Northern Rhodesia but I felt I was at "Shiwa Ngandu" having tea with the "Chipembele" and watching this place turn into a grand estate. Ms Lamb did an excellent job in her descriptions of events as they develop at Shiwa. I was totally captivated!!

Ishmael B Laryea