Skinny Kid with a Funny Name

YOUNG PUBLIC SERVANT CARPETTED BY PRESIDENT

Well, sometimes you just have to follow the links as the chain lengthens.

Another connection with respect to Kenya then!

Some years after Kenyan Independence from Britain, the much revered founding Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta took time to admonish a young member of the ruling elite of technocrats and western educated politicians.

The young man who had been identified as a troublemaker had been called to see the President because of his criticisms of the vague promise of ‘African Socialism', and the emergence of tribal favouritism and cronyism.

He asked “How are we going to remove the disparities in our country, such as the concentration of economic power in Asian and European hands, while not destroying what has already been achieved?” and mocked the possibility that ‘doing something perfunctorily might be better than doing nothing at all”.

Kenyatta told the young man that ‘because he could not keep his mouth shut, he would not work again until he had no shoes on his feet’.

The young economist who was carpeted by the President was a certain Barack Obama (Snr) - who had a son who went on to do quite well for himself in the USA.

The senior Obama's truculent manner took him from a career in the Kenyan governing class to “a small job at the Water Department” and then to unemployment and alcoholism.

BARACK OBAMA SENIOR

Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (4 April 1936 − 24 November 1982) was born on the shores of Lake Victoria. His family are members of the Luo ethnic group.

He was a son of Onyango Obama (c. 1895-1979) and his second wife Habiba Akumu Nyanjango. Before working as a cook for missionaries in Nairobi, Onyango had travelled widely, enlisting in the British colonial forces and visiting Europe, India, and Zanzibar, where he converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam and took the name Hussein Onyango Obama.

Hussein Onyango was jailed by the British for two years in 1949 due to his involvement in the Kenyan independence movement.

Obama Sr. received a scholarship in economics through a program organized by nationalist leader Tom Mboya. The program offered Western educational opportunities to outstanding Kenyan students.

President Obama has said of his father's scholarship, "The Kennedys decided: 'We're going to do an airlift. We're going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is. This young man named Barack Obama [Sr.] got one of those tickets and came over to this country.'"

At the age of 23, Obama Sr. enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, leaving behind his first wife Kezia (who was pregnant a second time) and their infant son. He had abandoned Islam and become an atheist by the time he moved to the United States.

In February 1961, Obama Sr. married fellow student Ann Dunham in Maui, Hawaii, though she would not find out that her new husband was already married until much later.

Obama Sr.'s and Dunham's son, Barack Obama II, was born on August 4, 1961.

Obama Sr. is buried in his native village of Nyang’oma Kogelo, Siaya District. His funeral was attended by Ministers Robert Ouko, Oloo Aringo and other prominent political figures.

So let’s skip now to the USA in 2004:

"OH, OBAMA! YOUNG BUCK’S ALREADY BIG IN KENYA

By Andrew Rice, New York Observer, 8/2/2004 edition

Uhuru Kenyatta and Barack Obama have a lot in common. They both have Kenyan fathers. They are a year apart in age. (Mr. Kenyatta is 43, Mr. Obama, 42.) They are both in politics.

In his dazzling keynote speech to the Democratic National Convention Tuesday night, Mr. Obama called himself as “a skinny kid with a funny name.” That description could just as easily fit the wiry Mr. Kenyatta—at least to Americans, who are unlikely to know that in Kenya, his name is synonymous with political power.

Mr. Kenyatta’s father, Jomo, the first president of independent Kenya, held something close to demigod status among his subjects until his death in 1978. The younger Kenyatta has already campaigned for his country’s presidency once, finishing second in the 2002 elections. As the head of Kenya’s largest opposition party, he looks well-positioned hold his father’s old job one day.

But on Tuesday night, it was the dynastic scion who stood in the upper reaches of the Fleet Center, looking for all the world like a rank party foot soldier as he waved a blue poster emblazoned with Mr. Obama’s name, the crowd roared, and Democrats’ newest star took the stage.

“Yeah!” Mr. Kenyatta shouted. Then, grinning widely, he turned and exchanged some excited words in Swahili with the man sitting next to him, Kenya’s local government minister.

Their giddiness was understandable. Before he gave his convention speech, Mr. Obama may have been an unknown to those outside America’s political junkie circles. But in Kenya, he’s a household name. Local newspapers carry regular updates on the candidacy of the half-Kenyan Senate candidate from Illinois. A brand of beer called “Senator” is popular at pubs around Nairobi; customers order it by asking for a round of “Obamas.”

The enthusiasm has reached Kenya’s political elite, too. The government sent a high-powered, bipartisan delegation of politicians to the convention, including Mr. Kenyatta. In part, they were in Boston to talk, network and party, like everyone else. But they also had a more specific goal: To meet Mr. Obama, whom they see as a potential ally to a continent that has far too few of them. (Mr. Obama, who has no Republican election opponent, is almost certain to join the Senate in January.)

“I think it’s important that someone of Kenyan descent will be in the Senate,” Mr. Kenyatta said - “Someone with a sense of African issues, and especially of Kenyan issues.”

The Kenyans’ Obama odyssey began earlier in the day, at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge. There, they were invited guests at a conference sponsored by the National Democratic Institute (NDI), an organization affiliated with the Democratic Party that sponsors programs to promote democracy worldwide.

The conference is a quadrennial event. Organizers bring together politicians and government officials from around the world to talk about weighty subjects like free trade and nuclear proliferation and, as important, to dole out a few precious passes into the convention hall to select foreign dignitaries.

At a time when Senator John Kerry is trying to sell his message of an America that’s respected abroad, it’s a small way to buy a bit of goodwill among bigwigs beyond our borders.

And this year’s convention, held at a time when much of the world’s attention is focused on this election, and its effects on American foreign policy, drew a record crowd: More than 600 dignitaries from 120 countries. Among the speakers they heard from was former President Bill Clinton, who dropped in unannounced to attend a roundtable discussion with the erstwhile leaders of Brazil, Portugal, Bolivia, Ireland and Canada.

Tuesday morning, though, the Kenyans were less concerned with David Gergen’s panel discussion on the dynamics of the 2004 election than they were transfixed by the single issue that dominates every political convention: access. They wanted to meet Mr. Obama, but they weren’t sure how to go about it. During the conference’s lunch break, the Kenyan delegates sat down around a small table at the Charles Hotel bar with a reporter and an NDI staff member and discussed how to secure an audience the Democratic Party’s star of the moment.

“We’re hoping to get something set up for tomorrow, after he gives his speech,” said Raila Odinga, Kenya’s minister of roads, public works and housing. Odinga wore a tidy gray beard and a gray pinstripe suit, and carried a cotton handkerchief. He is also the head of Kenya’s Liberal Democratic Party, and after the president, probably the second-most powerful man in his country. But the fact that Mr. Odinga was a Big Man back in Nairobi didn’t seem to matter much in Boston. Even though, as it turned out, Mr. Odinga did have a kind of connection.

"I was friends with Barack Obama, the father,” Mr. Odinga said.

The story the younger Mr. Obama’s parentage is well known by now: Barack Obama Sr., the son of a relatively well-to-do Kenyan farmer, went to the United States as a student, and met Mr. Obama’s mother in Hawaii, where they married and had a son. Obama Sr. won a scholarship to Harvard, left his family, and eventually returned to Kenya, where he became a prominent economist and civil servant. Except for one brief visit, the younger Mr. Obama never saw his father again. He died in a car accident in 1982.

His son may not have been acquainted with him, but Barack Obama Sr. was well-known to the Kenyans sitting around the table. They were all members of the same small, educated ruling elite. Furthermore, he and Mr. Odinga were both members of the Luo tribe. “He was from a place called Alego, which is actually where my mother comes from,” Mr. Odinga said.

Rose Waruhiu, another politician, said that her husband had gotten to know Obama Sr. because they had both studied abroad. “In those days, these people who came from America were very different,” she said. She and other others remembered the Senate candidate’s father as a jolly, sociable fellow. (In a book he wrote about his search for his roots in Kenya, Mr. Obama says that he discovered that his father was also a heavy drinker.)

“He was a great achiever,” Waruhiu said. “He had this very powerful voice. ‘I’m Barack Obama!’”

“EHHHH!” Mr. Odinga said, nodding in agreement.

“Obviously, we Kenyans are excited about the prospect of someone having Kenyan roots being elected to the U.S. Senate, purely from a biological point of view,” Mr. Odinga continued. “We think this is a great achievement. We see this as part of the historical struggle … to liberate people of African descent.”

“We’re really looking forward to being in the hall today,” Mr. Kenyatta added - “To see the reaction [and] the mood of the delegates themselves.”

The NDI staff member said she’d see what she could do. Mr. Kenyatta, lighting a cigarette, ambled off to have lunch at an outdoor seafood restaurant.

That evening, the Kenyans gathered with the rest of the conference attendees at a restaurant on the Boston waterfront. There was good news: NDI had secured them passes to the convention hall, which would assure them seats for Mr. Obama’s speech. Even better, someone had scored a couple of invitations to a private after-party in Mr. Obama’s honor, which was to be held at a downtown nightclub. There was no word yet on the private meeting, though.

As they stood waiting for a bus to take them to the convention hall, Catherine Gicheru, a dreadlocked Kenyan newspaper editor who was also attending the conference, cornered Mr. Odinga to talk political strategy.

“We have to make sure he gets [elected],” she said. “A win for him here is a win for us on the other side.”

Later, after hearing Mr. Obama’s speech, Ms. Gicheru would be even more effusive. “I think he should be the [Democratic] candidate,” she said. “He’s much more electrifying than what’s-his-name … Kerry.”

The Kenyans nibbled on pizza and cheese cubes and ordered beers from the cash bar. Mr. Kenyatta reflected on the differences he perceived between American democracy and the Kenyan model, based on what he’d seen at the convention.

“Let’s just say it’s interesting,” he said. Mr. Kenyatta was struck by the opulence of the lobbyist-sponsored shindigs, the amount of security around the convention hall, and the utter lack of spontaneity at the podium.

Though he didn’t mention it, Kenya is a lot different: Its last election featured a party-switching vice president, rallies that turned to riots, and worries that the outgoing president might refuse to hand over power to the election winner. By African standards, the exercise was considered a great success.

Mr. Kenyatta and Mr. Odinga were on opposing sides of that election. But in Boston, they got on famously. When the bus arrived, they got on together. They sat next to one another on the ride over to the convention hall, sharing in-jokes in Swahili.

Brionne Dawson, a statuesque NDI staff member, led the Kenyans into the Fleet Center and to their seats. Along the way, they passed the Rev. Al Sharpton, trailed by a retinue of hangers-on and TV cameras. Mr. Odinga, who had never heard of Mr. Sharpton, whirled around to take a closer look at the curious rotund reverend.

Finally, the group arrived at their seats, which were one row down from the topmost in the hall—closer to the thousands of red-white-and-blue balloons penned against the ceiling, waiting to be dropped, than to the speakers on the dais.

The national anthem played, and Mr. Odinga hummed along. (“I know the tune very well,” he told Mr. Kenyatta.)

They listened to a long parade of speakers. Ted Kennedy: “a very good orator,” in Mr. Odinga’s estimation. Richard Gephardt: “very uninspiring.” Ms. Dawson organized a security-chaperoned walk around the convention floor. When the Kenyans returned, she had come up with some “Obama” posters. Mr. Odinga gave her a disposable camera, and she took a picture of the Kenyans holding their signs with the convention floor as a backdrop.

Then Mr. Obama took the stage.

“Tonight, is a particular honor for me because, let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely,” he began. “My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack.”

The Kenyans exchanged approving glances. Most Africans, even powerful ones, have herded a few goats in their time.

Mr. Obama went on to talk about what he called “the true genius of America … the insistence on small miracles,” and made an implicit comparison with his father’s home continent.

“That we can tuck in our children at night and know they are fed and clothed and safe from harm. That we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door. That we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe or hiring somebody’s son - that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted—or at least, most of the time.”

The Kenyans nodded knowingly.

Mr. Obama was just warming up. When he hit the big applause lines, the hall leapt to its feet, drowning out his speech with deafening applause. Uhuru Kenyatta shook an index finger and grinned approvingly.

“He can speak!” Mr. Kenyatta shouted.

Afterwards, the lights went up and the Kenyan politicians eagerly dissected Mr. Obama’s oratory. “Exciting – Wonderful - Electrifying,” Mr. Kenyatta said.

“It makes you feel proud,” said Musikari Kombo, a government minister who was sitting next to Mr. Kenyatta. “We can also produce people of that kind.”

Shortly afterwards, everyone got up to leave. Mr. Kenyatta was tired and headed back to the hotel. Messrs. Kombo and Odinga, on the other hand, went to the after-party. It was frightfully crowded, and Mr. Obama was surrounded by well-wishers. “You could see that the people in there were really holding the man in awe,” Mr. Kombo would later recall.

Somehow, the two Kenyans managed to elbow their way into the swarm, and to have a brief conversation with Mr. Obama. “It was a one-minute exchange,” Mr. Kombo said.

But the visitors left satisfied that Kenya had a friend in Mr. Obama, and to them, that was what was important.

“What I’ve been looking forward to is the introduction,” Mr. Kombo said. “That is more important for now -so that the bridge is there.”

No ordinary English Farm Labourer

Strange as it may seem, the founder of modern Kenya 'Jomo Kenyatta' (Johnstone Kamau) had a direct and gentle exposure to English rural life.

Not with Cheshire and the Cholmondeleys though - in this case it was with the villagers of Storrington and Thakeham in West Sussex.

Which all goes to show that there are connections everywhere if you look for them and that, as Jomo said himself, 'it is all about personal relations and that these cannot be left largely to take care of themselves'.

From: Times Past - Storrington & District Museum: ‘Preserving Yesterday for Tomorrow [Newsletter No 4 April 2000]

JOMO KENYATTA - FAMOUS WARTIME RESIDENT

by Malcolm Linfield

"Jomo Kenyatta first came to England in 1929 as official spokesman for his people, the Kikuyu, to try and redress their grievances against the colonial government in Kenya.

He stayed in England for the next 17 years, during which time he studied anthropology at the University of London and wrote his acclaimed book 'Facing Mount Kenya', published in 1938.

Kenyatta found odd jobs to finance his mission and lived as cheaply as he could. He bombarded the Colonial Office with petitions, all of which were ignored, but his book was a bestseller, and helped to establish him as something of a celebrity who people wanted to meet and talk to.

The book was more than a history of his people's culture – it was also full of propaganda and attacked the whole colonial system.

Kenyatta was now ready to return to Kenya, having, at least, done much to publicise the grievances of his people to the outside world.

Unfortunately, the outbreak of the Second World War put paid to his plans, and he was unable to return home. He was persuaded to leave London and stay with friends in Sussex, arriving at the home of Roy Armstrong, a Southampton University lecturer, who lived in the beautiful Sandgate area two miles to the east of Storrington.

The peaceful countryside was, in many ways, a home from home to Kenyatta, with its view of the rolling South Downs, its bracken and silver birches, its woods and farmland.

He certainly felt comfortable here, and stayed throughout the duration of the war, renting the flat in Roy Armstrong's house. He was given his own area of scrub to clear where he successfully cultivated his own supply of vegetables and kept some chickens.

One of the silver birches became his "sacred tree", through which he communicated with the spirits of his people during his more reflective moments.

Soon after moving to Sussex, Kenyatta took a job as a nursery worker at A G Linfield's nurseries in the neighbouring parish of Thakeham. He was initially put to work in the tomato hothouses, although the shortage of manpower throughout the war meant he would have done many different jobs during the four or five years he was employed at the family firm.

The strive to produce as much home grown food as possible meant that companies like Linfields had to devote all their energies to the production of vegetables - however, very few mushrooms were grown as they were considered "devoid of food value".

Kenyatta apparently got on well with everybody, and proved to be a helpful and considerate colleague, willing to come to the aid of anyone who needed a helping hand.

During histime in Sussex, he became friendly with a family in Ashington and it was through them that he met Edna Clarke, a teacher. When her parents were killed in an air raid in May, 1941, Kenyatta instinctively offered his help and sympathy and within a year they were married. On 11th August, 1943, their son Peter Magana was born in Worthing Hospital.

Kenyatta was something of a novelty in the Storrington area. Affectionately known as Jumbo', he soon settled into Sussex life and was well known in the village. But he was definitely an extraordinary character - flamboyant and gregarious, a showman who delighted in mimicry and whose powers of imagination would hold an audience spellbound as he pretended to stalk and kill a lion.

No doubt these exceptional talents helped him to persevere through the long years of frustration and disappointment, but he never gave up, and despite numerous setbacks, somehow or other, he always managed to keep his dream alive.

No doubt, the peaceful Sussex countryside and its close resemblance to his homeland must have been a comfort as well as a reminder of his single-minded purpose. He managed to keep cheerful throughout his wartime exile, a man convinced of his destiny and confident that one day the aspirations of his people would be realized.

It would only be a matter of time.

To supplement his farmworker's wage of £4 per week, he was in much demand as a lecturer. Not only did he lecture to British troops under the Forces Educational Scheme, but he also lectured for the Workers Educational Association (WEA), usually about colonial issues.

In September 1946, Kenyatta sailed from Southampton, leaving behind Edna and their child at Thakeham. Once home, as the unquestioned leader of the new nationalism, he soon became fully immersed in Kenyan politics.

His primary objective was to show the colonial authorities the dangerous consequences of ignoring the new nationalist movement.

However, this is not to deny that he was probably prepared to tolerate a certain amount of violence, should the government not come to its senses and fail to grant concessions to the nationalists.

Kenyatta's alleged involvement with the "Mau Mau" rebellion during the 1950s has effectively tainted his reputation ever since.

It was his failure to gain any concessions after World War II which enabled the militants to come to power, and the result was the tragedy of the "Mau Mau" rebellion: with the enormous loss of 13,547 lives (of whom 13,423 were Kikuyu alone).

Kenyatta's responsibility for "Mau Mau" has been the subject of a great deal of debate, but he openly condemned it on a number of occasions because it threatened to destroy the tribal unity he had been carefully nurturing.

Unfortunately; he lost the initiative to the militants who exploited his position as the father of the nationalist movement by elevating him to the position of "leader" of "Mau Mau", whether he liked it or not - even after his detention by the colonial authorities.

The tragedy of "Mau Mau" is that it need never have happened - an enlightened government would have seen the folly of continuing to suppress all African aspirations.

By 1956 the rebellion was over; more than 11,000 Kikuyu had been killed by the security forces. But all had not been in vain; the revolt ensured that change was inevitable and in 1961 Kenyatta and the other detainees were released.

During negotiations with the British Government in London in October, 1963, Kenyatta took the opportunity to revisit old friends in West Sussex. He visited Roy Armstrong at his wartime home at Highover, Bracken Lane, complete with limousine, cabinet and bodyguards!

Politics was apparently not one of the subjects they covered. Arthur Johnson of West Chiltington, who knew Kenyatta very well during the war years, stated that he "could never believe that he was responsible for those atrocities in Kenya."

Arthur’s wife said: 'We remember him as he was here. We thought he was a very friendly and very nice, charming man who was very fond of children and of animals."

Mrs FW Eddolls, in charge of the Linfields' canteen during the war, also said how she found him to be "a very nice and likeable chap" and how she would be very pleased to see him again.

In 1964 Kenya became a republic within the British Commonwealth with Kenyatta its first president. He had come a long way from his days as the friendly, helpful nursery worker at Linfields' nursery!

His first act was to welcome the frightened whites to stay in the country.

Even though he had been kept in detention by the colonial government for nine years, he was able to forget his own suffering and offer the hand of reconciliation. He also knew the importance of maintaining stability in Kenya if foreign capital was still to be invested in the new state.

Despite the years of violence of "Mau Mau", Kenya soon became a model of harmony and stability. Foreign investment boomed and the economy flourished".

SOME KENYATTA QUOTES

"I like the English - in England. Africa is for the Africans."

"When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the Land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible."

"It Africans were left in peace on their own lands, Europeans would have to offer them the benefits of white civilization in real earnest before they could obtain the African labour which they want so much. They would have to offer the African a way of life which was really superior to the one his father lived before, and a share in the prosperity given them by their command of science. They would have to let the African choose what parts of European culture could be beneficially transplanted, and how they could be adapted ... The African is conditioned, by cultural and social institutions of centuries, to a freedom of which Europe has little conception, and it is not in his nature to accept serfdom forever."

"To all the dispossessed youth of Africa: (we strive) for perpetuation of communion with ancestral spirits through the fight for African freedom, and in the firm faith that the dead, the living, and the unborn will unite to rebuild the destroyed shrines."

"Europeans assume that, given the right knowledge and ideas, personal relations can be left largely to take care of themselves, and this is perhaps the most fundamental difference in outlook between Africans and Europeans."

"The European condemns the Africans for having two wives yet he keeps two mistresses".

"Many people may think that, now there is Uhuru, now I can see the sun of Freedom shinning, richness will pour down like manna from Heaven. I tell you there will be nothing from Heaven. We must all work hard, with our hands, to save ourselves from poverty, ignorance, and disease."

"I have no intention of retaliating or looking backwards. We are going to forget the past and look forward to the future."

"Don't be fooled into turning to Communism looking for food."

"God said this is our land, land in which we flourish as people... we want our cattle to get fat on our land so that our children grow up in prosperity; and we do not want the fat removed to feed others."

Issy Blow - Titfer-topped Toff

FIRST THE OBITUARY & THEN SOME CONNECTIONS

Isabella Delves Broughton, fashion journalist and stylist: born 19 November 1958; married 1981 Nicholas Taylor (marriage dissolved 1983), 1989 Detmar Blow; died Gloucester 7 May 2007.

Flamboyant, fragile, yet completely, utterly fearless, Isabella Blow was the ultimate English eccentric. An unmissable sight on the fashion circuit, Blow was known for many things, but primarily for discovering the designer Alexander McQueen, nurturing new talent and obliterating the view of customers at the Paris couture shows.

Heads would invariably swivel as Blow entered any fashion arena - be it a run-down warehouse in the East End or a rarefied atelier in Paris. Her dress-code remained an elegant version of the fashion cliché " classic with a twist". Teetering on satin stiletto Manolos, wearing couture gown, feathered hat and smeared ruby lipstick,

Blow was a dishevelled bird of paradise who didn't give a damn about convention.

She discovered Sophie Dahl sobbing in a doorway; she bought Alexander McQueen's entire degree show, and had Philip Treacy design her wedding hat when she married Detmar Blow in 1988 - as well being credited with discovering Hussein Chalayan and Stella Tennant.

She also worked as Anna Wintour's assistant on American Vogue, then for Michael Roberts at Tatler, then British Vogue, then The Sunday Times - and ultimately she returned to Tatler as fashion director. Convinced she was ugly, she almost always wore a Treacy hat that would obscure her face, accessorized with her famous slash of red lipstick - MAC designed one in homage to her.

She loved to gossip, talking 20 to the dozen, dropping names, witticisms and acute observations, and invariably ending her sentences with a deafening roar of laughter. In the manner of penniless aristocrats everywhere, Blow was no good with money and identified with Oscar Wilde's assertion that "anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination".

Blow's role in the fashion industry was impossible to define. Incredibly perceptive, inventive and intuitive, she worked completely on instinct, her butterfly mind flitting from arranging a big-name fashion shoot to pursuing the unsuspecting mother of a young fashion student, aka the Next Big Thing.

Although her last official title was as Fashion Editor at Large at Tatler, Blow, flitting in and out of the office, with a life far larger - and more complex - than her job, was an agent provocateur.

She had, during her career, worked at The Sunday Times and been an unlikely consultant at Dupont, Lycra and Swarovski crystal. Her natural habitat, however, was Condé Nast. Emma Soames, former Editor of Tatler, who employed the 22-year-old Blow to work with her Fashion Editor Michael Roberts, says that she came into the world a fully formed fashion editor.

Utterly uncompromising. She just loved it. She just breathed it all. She once came in to see me wearing what could only be described as a pussy pelmet, suspenders and ripped stockings. I thought, "Oh, here we go again, creative person wants to leave." But in fact, she sat down and said, completely seriously, "I'm very, very worried about my pension." Of course, it was never mentioned again.

She was born Isabella Delves Broughton in 1958, daughter of Sir Evelyn Delves Broughton Bt and his wife Helen Shore - her grandfather was Sir " Jock" Delves Broughton of White Mischief fame, who was tried for the murder in Kenya of the Earl of Erroll (and acquitted).

Isabella was educated at Heathfield School and, after her A- levels, enrolled at a secretarial academy. In 1979 she decamped to the United States, briefly attending Columbia University to study ancient Chinese art.

In the early years of her career she led the life of a dilettante - dabbling in various jobs to make a living, eventually finding her métier when she was introduced to Anna Wintour at American Vogue. Isabella Delves Broughton became Wintour's assistant and Wintour her mentor. Wintour has described her as an "amazingly bright light in a world of increasingly corporate culture".

After a brief early marriage, Delves Broughton met Detmar Blow at a friend's wedding in 1988. She claimed he was initially attracted not to her face but to her outlandish hat. They were married in medieval style at Gloucester Cathedral in 1989.

They made an extraordinary couple at gallery openings and fashion happenings, with Detmar in bespoke pinstripe suits and Isabella a vision of aristocratic messiness, resembling a latter-day Miss Havisham.

In 1990, Blow made the transfer from Tatler to Vogue, then under the editorship of Liz Tilberis. She had already spotted and promoted the milliner Philip Treacy; he made the medieval headpiece she wore to her wedding the year before he graduated from the Royal College of Art.

Without a London workroom, Blow knew, Treacy could sink without a trace, and so she installed him in the basement of her home, secured him a contract to design for Chanel and continued to wear his outlandish concoctions for the rest of her life.

It was during this time that she not only discovered Alexander McQueen but reinvented him. Blow was sitting in the audience of McQueen's MA show at St Martin's and, taken with his collection, relentlessly pursued him.

She rang his home, his mother and his tutor, then wore his graduation collection in a Vogue shoot at the Blows' Gloucestershire estate, Hilles, in November 1992. It was she who persuaded the former Lee McQueen to change his name to Alexander (as in Alexander the Great, she said).

Although she secured financial security for McQueen - over dinner, she persuaded Tom Ford to convince the Gucci powers-that-be to back McQueen - Blow was left with nothing but reflected glory.

Despite her promotion of fledgeling fashion talent, she never made a bean. When her father died in 1993, leaving £6m, Blow discovered that she had been left only £5,000.

But she had many things that money can't buy: presence, style and legions of loyal friends.

She suffered from depression all her life, but after her separation from and then reconciliation with Detmar, the illness came to the surface with alarming regularity. She made suicide attempts, throwing herself off a bridge and trying to drown herself in a lake.

Earlier this year, she was diagnosed with cancer. Issy's sister-in-law Selina Blow told me on Friday that she had "the most star-studded visitor list in the NHS".

"There was something other-worldly about her," says Emma Soames. "I think it was a great sadness that she never had a child. Although she was from another world, essentially she was made of flesh and blood like the rest of us. The same things made her cry."

Isabella died on Sunday, May 6 2007, having been treated for cancer and severe depression for some months, at the age of 48. Philip Treacy designed a black feathered hat for her cortege and a funeral was held in The Guards Chapel where the whole fashion world descended in their most appropriate outfits to pay their respects

[Composite from: Linda Watson & Jo Craven]

MY INTEREST

The Broughtons are descended from the ancient Vernon family of Cheshire and in particular from Richard Vernon, fourth son of the 3rd medieval Baron Vernon of Shipbrook, Cheshire. Adam, his son, was of Napton, Warwickshire. Adams's grandson Roger acquired the estate at Broughton, Staffordshire, from which the surname derives, in the 13th century.

Their 'seat' Doddington Hall near Nantwich, Cheshire is a large private Grade 1 mansion designed by Samuel Wyatt built ca.1780. It is set in gardens landscaped by Capability Brown, overlooking Doddington Lake, a popular sailing venue. The 13th century castle is to the north of the Hall.

['The house is at the moment the subject of substantial building works which are being effected in four phases. Stage I (refurbishing the exterior) has been completed. Parties wishing to view the exterior (and the interior by appointment only because the site remains extremely hazardous) should write to: The Farm Manager, Doddington Park Farm, Nantwich'].

The first Baronet was the son of Thomas Broughton (died 1648) who was an ardent Royalist and supporter of Charles I and who was obliged to 'compound at a cost of £3,200', for the return of his estates following sequestration by the Parliament at the conclusion of the Civil War. His son was honoured with the Baronetcy at the Restoration of Charles II.

Isabella was the eldest child of Major Sir Evelyn Delves Broughton, a military officer, and his second wife, Helen Mary Shore, a barrister. She had three siblings: two sisters, Julia and Lavinia, and a brother, John, who drowned in the family's swimming pool at the age of two, and whose death contributed to the family's imminent fracture.

In 1972, when she was 14, her parents separated and her mother left the household, shaking each daughter by the hand. Her parents divorced two years later. Isabella did not get along with her father, who bequeathed her only £5,000 from his estate, which was worth more than one million pounds. Blow often said her fondest memory was trying on her mother's pink hat, a recollection that she explained led to her career in fashion.

I have a vivid memory of hearing the news of the death of her infant brother John in 1964, when I was 20 years old. Though, as I remembered the terribly sad story, the toddler had drowned in an ornamental pond at Doddington Hall.

Although the aristocracy was a separate breed, they provided the gossip that fuelled conversation back in the 1950s in the way that people now draw on the tabloids and trashy magazines to follow the problems and peccadilloes of Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie etc. In fact seeing the frontispiece photo spread of the latest debutante in the Cheshire Life - say The Hon. Arabella Hunt-Cropper – was about as close as many people came to a pin-up at the time.

I remembered the Cheshire connection when I went to see a special exhibition of Issy's hats that was being shown at the excellent Dowse Museum, Lower Hutt about a year ago.

THE CONNECTION TO THE CHOLMONDELEYS

Issy’s grandfather Sir Henry John 'Jock' Delves Broughton, 11th Baronet (1883 - 5 December 1942) inherited the baronetcy of Broughton in 1914. Sir Jock also inherited some 34,000 acres (140 km²) of family estate in Cheshire, but was forced to sell off most of it in the 1930s to pay gambling debts.

On the outbreak of World War I, as a captain in the 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards, he was due to sail on the troop ship SS Novara, but was taken ill and had to be replaced before the ship sailed.

In 1939 he was suspected of insurance fraud after the theft of his wife's pearls and some paintings, on which he claimed the insurance.

He was married twice: to Vera Edyth Griffith-Boscawen in 1913, divorcing in 1940; then in 1941 to Diana Caldwell (d. 1987), daughter of Seymour Caldwell. After his death, Diana remarried twice, the second time to Thomas Cholmondeley, 4th Baron Delamere.

‘Jock’ is chiefly known for his trial in Kenya for the murder of 22nd Earl of Erroll, who had been conducting an affair with his wife Diana. These events were dramatized in the film White Mischief.

It appears that Erroll and Diana had something of a 'Some Enchanted Evening' meeting of needs 'across a crowded room' in the Muthaiga Club. One assumes that this was during an interlude in Lord Delamere's odd habit of chipping golf balls on to the roof of the Club with a 5-iron.

The Earl of Erroll was shot dead, by a single pistol bullet in the head, in his car at a crossroads outside Nairobi in 1941, the year after Sir Jock had moved to Kenya with his new wife Diana to join the Happy Valley set, a group of British colonials living in the Happy Valley region of Kenya (& 'ruled' it seems by Lord Delamere).

Alice de Janzé was initially viewed by the community as a suspect (a previous mistress of the Earl, she had shot and seriously wounded an earlier lover). But Sir Jock soon became the police's prime suspect and was tried for the murder.

He was acquitted for lack of evidence, a conclusion that hinged chiefly on the identification of the gun used. Sir Jock's pistol was a Colt with 6 rifling grooves, and Erroll was killed by a bullet with 5 grooves. No pistol was produced at the trial by Sir Walter Harragin, prosecuting attorney for the Crown, or by the defendant.

Broughton claimed that two of his pistols, a silver cigarette case and 10 or 20 shillings were stolen 3 or 4 days before Erroll's death.

Superintendent Arthur Poppy, a policeman dealing with the case, claimed that Sir Jock had stolen the guns from himself to give the impression that he had no .32 pistol at the time. Additionally, the fatal bullet's rifling was clockwise. Colts use anti-clockwise rifling.

A telegram was sent to the Colt Company in America to clear up the confusion. Another bullet also was fired at Erroll, missed and after ricocheting off a metal pillar in Erroll's car, ended up near the accelerator. It also had 5 grooves and clockwise turning.

A number of books have been written about the case, notably James Fox's investigation White Mischief: The Murder of Lord Erroll, later made into a film White Mischief (1987).

In May 2007 in the Daily Telegraph, author Christine Nicholls described taped evidence claimed to be definitive proof that Sir Jock was the murderer.

The Cholmondeleys of Cholmondeley (or Chumleys of Chumley)

NO IFS AND BUTS

Although apparently quiet and decorously rural, Wettenhall (the village where I grew up in Cheshire) had actually been the scene of a serious rift between those who followed the Anglican (‘C of E’) communion and those who were Methodists in the tradition of John Wesley. The 15-20 farming families were more or less split down the middle.

By the 1950s, the distinction was becoming little more than a curiosity. There were however still complications. When my sister decided to marry her otherwise eminently suitable beau from a neighbouring farm, there was consternation that, as the Hollinsheads were ‘Methodees”, we might be reduced to serving orange juice at the wedding reception.

Anyhow, this storm passed over. But my brother-in-law John faced a challenging situation some years later after he had become the tenant of Bankhouse Farm on the Cholmondely Estate. In the early 1980s Lord Cholmondeley faced a problem in the Estate Chapel (a beautiful example of a Puritan Chapel that is the sole remnant of a former Jacobean Mansion).

The problem as explained by his Lordship was that ‘the current Verger is a bit past it’. ‘John’, he said, ‘You are the man for the job’. ‘But Your Lordship’, he protested, ‘I am Methodist’. ‘Not too worry’ was the reply, ‘I have already talked it through with the Bishop’. So that was that. And that also was very much how the aristocracy got their way – no ifs and buts were allowed.

The Hugh Cholmondeley known to my family was the 6th Marquess of Cholmondeley (1919-1990). He was the son of George Cholmondeley, 5th Marquess of Cholmondeley and Sybil Sassoon, of the Sassoon and Rothschild family. Cholmondeley's acceded to his father's land, estates and title in 1968, and his inherited title became Marquess of Cholmondeley.

Cholmondeley served in British army, initially in the Grenadier Guards and later in the 1st Royal Dragoons. During the Second World War, he saw action in the Middle East, in Italy, in France and in Germany. In 1943, he was decorated with the award of Military Cross (MC). When Cholmondeley retired from the military in 1949, he had attained the rank of Major.

CHOLMONDELEY FAMILY HISTORY

The Cholmondeleys apparently trace their ancestry to William Le Belward, Baron of Malpas, who married Tanglust, the natural daughter of Hugh Kevelioc, Earl of Chester in the late 11th Century.

The family later prospered through its connections with the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy. In 1659, Robert Cholmondeley, 1st Viscount Cholmondeley succeeded to the estates of his uncle Lord Leinster and two years later he was raised to the Peerage of Ireland as Viscount Cholmondeley, of Kells in the County of Meath.

Robert’s eldest son Hugh supported the claim of William and Mary to the English throne, and after their accession in 1689 he was rewarded when he was made Baron Cholmondeley, of Namptwich (Nantwich) in Cheshire, in the Peerage of England (which gave him a seat in the House of Lords).

At this time in history, the original Anglo-Irish (and generally Catholic) nobility was being replaced by ‘loyal’ Protestants and there were great fortunes and enormous estates to be won by those who played their cards right.

As Lord Cholmondeley, he was appointed Comptroller of the Household by Queen Anne in 1708. He held this post only until October of the same year, when he was made Treasurer of the Household. He was stripped of this office in 1713 but restored when George I became king in 1714. He died in 1725.

He was succeeded by his younger brother George, the second Earl. He was a prominent military commander and commanded the Horse Guards at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

In 1715, ten years before he succeeded his elder brother, he was raised to the Peerage of Ireland in his own right as Baron Newborough, of Newborough in the County of Wexford, and in 1716 he was made Baron Newburgh, in the Isle of Anglesey, in the Peerage of Great Britain.

On his death the titles passed to his son, the third Earl. He was a politician and held office as Lord Privy Seal and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

The current family is also directly descended from Sir Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, (26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745), who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain.

A Whig (i.e. Liberal) who was first elected in 1701, Walpole served during the reigns of George I and George II. His tenure is normally dated from 1721 when he obtained the post of First Lord of the Treasury; others date it from 1730 when, with the retirement of Lord Townshend, he became the sole and undisputed leader of the Cabinet.

Walpole continued to govern until his resignation in 1742 prompted by the Battle of Cartagena disaster, making his administration the longest in British history. Because of his homely ways and strong Norfolk roots, he was often known to both friends and detractors as the Norfolk Squire.

On 30 July 1700, Walpole married Catherine Shorter (died 20 August 1737), with whom he later had two daughters and four sons. His second daughter Mary Walpole (c. 1705—2 January 1732) married the 3rd Earl of Cholmondeley on 14 September 1723 and had two sons.

The Fourth Earl was a successful career politician and courtier who became the Earl of Rocksavage and the Marquess of Cholmondeley in 1815.

THE KENYAN MOSES IN HAPPY VALLEY

The most notorious of the recent Cholmondeleys was Hugh Cholmondeley, 3rd Baron Delamere (28 April 1870 - 13 November 1931) who was one of the first and most influential British settlers in Kenya. In this he appears to have sought to emulate the successes of his ancestors in ‘settling’ Ireland.

Hugh Delamere (the son of Hugh Cholmondeley, 2nd Baron Delamere, and Augusta Emily Seymour) moved to Kenya in 1901. He was as famous for his tireless labours to establish a working agricultural economy in Africa as he was for childish antics among his European friends when he was at his leisure.

He made his first trip to Africa in 1891 to hunt lion in Somaliland, and returned yearly to resume the hunt. In 1894 he was severely mauled by an attacking lion, and was only saved when his Somali gunbearer Abdullah Ashur leaped on the lion, giving Delamere time to retrieve his rifle. As a result of the attack, Lord Delamere limped for the rest of his life; he also developed a healthy respect for Somalis (and presumably lions!).

It is believed that on one of these Somaliland hunting trips, Delamere coined the term “white hunter” – the term which came to describe the professional safari hunter in colonial East Africa.

Delamere employed a professional hunter named Alan Black and a native Somali hunter to lead the safari. As the story goes, in order to avoid confusion, the Somali was referred to as the "black hunter," and Black was called the "white hunter."

In 1896, Delamere, with a retinue including a doctor, taxidermist, photographer, and 200 camels, set out to cross the deserts of southern Somaliland, intending to enter British East Africa from the north. In 1897, he arrived in the lush green highlands of what is now central Kenya.

In 1899, Delamere married Lady Florence Anne Cole, daughter of Lowry Egerton Cole, 4th Earl of Enniskillen. The couple soon sought to relocate to the Kenya highlands.

Around 1903, he received a 99-year lease on 100,000 acres (400 km2) of land that would be named “Equator Ranch,” requiring him to pay a £200 annual rent and to spend £5000 on the land over the first five years of occupancy.

In 1906, he acquired a large farm, which would eventually include more than 200,000 acres (800 km²), located between the Molo River and Njoro town. This ranch he named Soysambu. Together, these vast possessions made Delamere one of Kenya's "largemen" - the local name for the handful of colonists with the most substantial land holdings.

In 1905, Delamere was a pioneer of the East African dairy industry but most of his imported animals succumbed to diseases such as foot and mouth and Red water disease. Eventually, Delamere decided to grow wheat but this too, was plagued by disease, specifically rust.

By 1909, Delamere was out of money, resting his last hopes on a 1,200-acre (4.9 km2) wheat crop that eventually failed. He was quoted by author Elspeth Huxley as commenting drily, “I started to grow wheat in East Africa to prove that though I lived on the equator, I was not in an equatorial country.”

To supplement his income, he even tried raising ostriches for their feathers, importing incubators from Europe; this venture also failed with the advent on the motor car and the decline in fashion of feathered hats.

Delamere was active in recruiting settlers to East Africa, promising new colonists 640 acres (2.6 km2), with 200 people eventually responding. He persuaded some of his friends among the English landed gentry to buy large estates like his own and take up life in Kenya.

He is credited with helping to found the so-called Happy Valley set, a clique of well-off British colonials whose pleasure-seeking habits eventually degenerated into drug-taking and wife-swapping.

The story is often told of Delamere riding his horse into the dining room of Nairobi’s Norfolk Hotel and jumping over the tables. He was also known to knock golf balls onto the roof of the Muthaiga Club, the pink stucco gathering-place for Nairobi's white elite, and then climb up to retrieve them.

"The extension of European civilization was in itself a desirable thing," he wrote in 1927. "The British race... was superior to heterogeneous African races only now emerging from centuries of relative barbarism... the opening up of new areas by means of genuine colonisation was to the advantage to the world."

And a contemporary and former colonist said: “His ascendancy over the settlers of Kenya has been enjoyed long enough for him to expect all men – and women – to do his bidding, and do it promptly. He is their Moses. For 25 years he has been their guide.”

Delamere died in November 1931 at age 61, leaving unpaid bank loans totaling £500,000 (£15-20 million in today’s terms).

THE NEW ZEALAND SAINT

The Venerable George James Cholomondeley, sometime Archdeacon of Christchurch and Vicar of Opawa, belonged to a branch of one of the oldest and noblest families of England; he was closely related to the Marquis of Cholomondeley, and was a cousin of the present Lord Delamere. The history of these families dates back to the eleventh century.

The late Archdeacon's estate at Port Levy is named after the old family seat, “Vale Royal,” the residence of the present Lord Delamere. He was born at Peel, Isle of Man, in 1833, and came to New Zealand in the early 1850s. He was temporarily located as curate at St. Michael's, Christchurch, and afterwards became vicar of the pastoral cure of the Waimakariri.

In 1862 he was appointed to the parish of Heathcote, where he remained until 1875. He was Diocesan Secretary from 1887 to 1890, and became vicar of Opawa in 1875, a canon of the Christchurch Cathedral in 1882, and Archdeacon of Christchurch in 1890.

During his lifetime Archdeacon Cholmondeley published many valuable works on religious subjects, notably, “Retrospect and Prospect,” and “Church Work,” together with other single sermons.

In 1876 he wrote a reply to the tract, “Does the Church of England Sanction Auricular Confession,” and in 1885 he published a pamphlet, entitled, “Clergy Pensions.”

Archdeacon Cholmondeley was a member of the Historical Committee of the Canterbury Natives' Association, and the very complete work, containing the names of the Canterbury pioneers who arrived in the ships of the Canterbury Association, was compiled mainly by him.

After a long life spent in the service of the Church, Archdeacon Cholmondeley died at the vicarage of Opawa, on the 11th of December, 1901, deeply regretted by all classes and denominations.

He left behind the Cholmondeley Home which is still open.

‘Located down Cholmondeley Lane, overlooking the sea, Cholmondeley is a house full of love, warmth and hope. We support the children of Canterbury when their parents cannot. Our children are aged between 3 and 12 years. They come from families with issues including severe illness, substance abuse and addiction, or the death of a parent. Cholmondeley has been supporting the children of Canterbury for 85 years and we are very proud of the quality of care we provide.

Apart from the first impression of the grand old house overlooking the sea, you're also likely to be greeted by the wafts of home baking from the kitchen. At any one time, around 28 children stay at Cholmondeley for an average of 10 days. Regardless of the duration of their stay each child gets love, support, structure, nutrition and care of the highest possible quality'.

[Many thanks to my fellow NZ Blogger Sandy for the tip-off about the NZ connection.

I recommend Sandy's Blog:

RANDOM MEANDERINGS: My Taphophiliac, genealogy, heritage and hobby interests]