This biography is about Denys George Finch Hatton (24 April 1887 - 14 May 1931). Finch Hatton was one of the British settlers of East Africa early in the 20th century, was a big-game hunter, and also the lover of Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), who wrote about him in `Out of Africa' (first published in 1937). And, while it's the `Out of Africa' connection which led me to read this book, it's the history of these times in East Africa which kept me turning the pages.

Denys Finch Hatton was, apparently, the kind of man that women adored and men idolized. He was an accomplished athlete whilst at Eton and Oxford but seemed to have little purpose in his life until he sailed to British East Africa in 1910 and fell in love with the continent. During his time in Africa, Finch Hatton saw action in the battlefields of the East Africa campaign where he was serving as a captain in the allied forces when he first met Karen Blixen in Nairobi.

The facts of Finch Hatton's life - his aristocratic heritage, his adventurous and restless spirit, and his affairs reflect aspects of a generation of Edwardian British settlers in East Africa. Not particularly likeable in many respects and from this distance, but certainly interesting. Ms Wheeler writes of Finch Hatton, of Blixen, and of some others, as pioneers in a land which was quickly becoming transformed as a consequence of struggles between European powers.

Towards the end of his life, Finch Hatton was more interested in photographing animals than in shooting them. Perhaps, if he'd lived longer, he may have made an impact on conservation. Perhaps, given his restless spirit, he may have moved onto something completely different.

'No one who ever met him,' his Times obituary concluded, 'whether man or woman, old or young, white or black, failed to come under his spell.'

It's hard to argue with a Times obituary, but the man those people met does not fully come to life for me on these pages. Denys Finch Hatton himself left few papers: no diaries, and only a few letters. I enjoyed this book, but less as a biography than as a history of colonial East Africa and of a period of British social history.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith