Kenya killing puts British colonialism on trial

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.

Thomas Cholmondeley pleaded not guilty yesterday to killing a black Kenyan he suspected of poaching on his 100,000-acre property in Kenya’s fertile Rift Valley – a region once dubbed “Happy Valley” because of the decadent lifestyles of its colonial settlers.