On Christmas Day 1952, the great and good of colonial Kenya were treated to a performance by Frank Sinatra in Government House, Nairobi.
Presiding over this glamorous event were the governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, and his wife Mary, a woman so aristocratic that, on boarding the ship bound for Africa, she mistook the welcoming admiral for a porter and handed him her handbag.
In the audience that night were Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, in Africa to film Mogambo, and a cross-section of Kenya’s ruling class clad in evening dress. There were no Africans, apart from staff.
From the colonial vantage point, everything was as it should be: white hunters were still slaughtering the wild fauna, Happy Valley was louche
