A descendant of Kenya’s most famous white settlers today went on trial for murder in the shooting dead of a black man on his vast estate, a case that has stirred simmering racial tensions in the east African nation.

A descendant of Kenya’s first white settlers, whose freewheeling ways inspired the book “White Mischief”, has been charged with murder for the second time in 13 months in a case that has exposed deep resentment about British colonialism in East Africa.