The true story of the life and mysterious murder of the most talked-about and glamorous member of Kenya’ s notorious Happy Valley set.Since Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll, was discovered dead in his car with a bullet through his head just outside Nairobi in 1941, speculation has not ceased as to the culprit and motive for his murder. The authorities seemed satisfied with the highly sensationalised trial of the only suspect, Jock Broughton, the cuckolded husband of Erroll’s last lover, Diana. A not-guilty verdict was returned after a baffling display of confusing evidence and clumsy police work. Trzebinski, who has lived in Kenya for 30 years, was not satisfied with the conflicting gossip on the case, none of whose evidence adds up, including that of the celebrated White Mischief by James Fox. In this gripping evocation of a glamorous, decadent and sinister life, Trzebinski uses her renowned biographer’s skill to unlock the mystique surrounding the man, and the mystery enveloping his death. Her investigations lead her to astonishing conclusions about the true motive for his murder and a conspiracy of confusion that finds its source in Whitehall’s War Office.
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Errol Trzebinski. The Life and Death of Lord Erroll: The Truth Behind the Happy Valley Murder
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF LORD ERROLL. THE TRUTH BEHIND THE HAPPY VALLEY MURDER. Errol Trzebinski
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
Prologue
1 Quest for the Truth
2 Gnarled Roots
3 Boyhood and Eton
4 To Hell with Husbands
5 Slains
6 Oserian
7 Blackshirts in Kenya?
8 Josh Posh on the Warpath
9 The Infernal Triangle
10 The Investigation
11 The Sallyport Papers
12 All’s Fair in Love and War
Appendix
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Author. THE LIFE AND DEATH OF LORD ERROLL
Notes. Abbreviations
Prologue
1 Quest for the Truth
2 Gnarled Roots
3 Boyhood and Eton
4 ‘To Hell with Husbands’
5 Slains
6 Oserian
7 Blackshirts in Kenya?
8 Josh Posh on the Warpath
9 The Infernal Triangle
10 The Investigation
11 The Sallyport papers
12 All’s Fair in Love and War
Epilogue
Appendix
Other Works
Poem
Copyright
About the Publisher
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WITH EMMA PERY
Robert Frost
.....
I began to realise that I had as much chance of finding any official papers on Erroll, as he had of leaping from his grave in Kiambu to tell me himself what had really happened to him. Even Robert Foran’s History of the Kenya Police* is silent on the subject of the Erroll murder.31 It contains not even the names, let alone any other details, of the team investigating it. References in Foran’s book to relevant issues of The Kenya Police Review led me to believe that I would be able to locate these at least. Yet not a single copy was in the possession of any library in England. I was able to trace only one issue, through a private source. And I could not find any copies of The British Lion, a fascist publication in which, I had been assured, Erroll’s name had appeared. When I applied at Colindale Newspaper Library, I was informed that all three volumes of it that they possessed appeared to have been stolen the year before.
In 1988, Merlin Erroll had invited anyone to come forward who could throw light on his grandfather’s military or political career, observing, ‘Some say that the affair with Diana was a red herring.’32 One response came from a retired Lieutenant-Colonel John Gouldbourn, who had been with the Kenya Regiment in 1940. Gouldbourn’s view was forthright: ‘I do not doubt that there was a “cover-up” of the murder by the judiciary, the police and the military in that order. There were sufficient persons with an interest for there to be an “inner cabal” … You will appreciate the East African Colonial Forces (the KAR)* and the South African Division were poised to attack Somaliland. The dates would have been known to Joss Erroll. How discreet Erroll was is anybody’s guess.’33
