Midday Sun - 'M.B. first arrived in Africa at the age of 18 with 2 tin boxes, a shot-gun, £100 in cash and an agreement with an up-country farmer [Brodhurst-Hill] to work for a year in exchange for his keep. By 1936 he had set up on his own, survived the worst of the Depression, and was winning a name as a progressive farmer, with as yet no thought of politics. Like Cincinnatus he was called from the plough, or rather called himself, to the battlefield of politics immediately after WW2 It was the war that brought about this change of direction. Within a few months of volunteering for the KAR on its outbreak, he had become a Lt. Col. ...... due to his knowledge of the Luo language. ......... Africans returned from the war, he said, with changed ideas. For 4 years white officers and black askaris and NCOs had shared dangers and hardships, eaten the same food, slept side by side, lived and sometimes died together, and they had come to gain an understanding of each others point of view. ......... After the war he was elected to Legco as member for the Rift Valley, and subsequently to the leadership of the European elected members ....…. (much more on political life) ........... Michael was at home with Africans because he spoke his mind and pulled their legs without a trace either of that arrogance they had so often to put up with, as a rule with remarkable tolerance, or with the sycophancy that white people of a later generation sometimes display, and which they despise. It is rare to meet Africans without a sense of humour, and theirs and Michael's strike the same chord.      

Who's Who - Mem. Legco for Rift Valley constit. since 1948 (reelected 1952). Leader Eur. Elected Members Org. since 1952; Apptd. Eur. Min. w/o Portfolio and Member Kenya War Ccl. War Service 1939-45, RE ending as Col., HQ EA Command.   

Campbell - Michael B. came out of his front door, lightly swishing a riding-crop, and a groom touched his cap to him. ..... "When I arrived in Kenya 18 years ago," he said, "I was taken on as a farm pupil. I had to learn the business the hard way. When I bought this land" - he waved a hand at the park with its handsome trees, the creepered house with its stone terrace - "it was virgin bush." Before the Mau Mau troubles began he was offered £75,000 for his farm at Subukia, and turned the offer down.  

Frampton - On the ship mother made friends with Michael Blundell's mother and we visited them in the Solai Valley. Michael's senior partners were John and Marianne Price ……

Nicholls - Even as late as 1952 white Kenyan politicians were keen to encourage further white settlement and counter the left-wing British MP Fenner Brockway's campaign against imperialism. They included Michael Blundell, later so pro-African. Blundell was too thin-skinned to tolerate criticism or unpopularity, so he was always changing his mind, a disadvantage in a politician.

Who's Who 1954 - Chmn. Allsopps EA Ltd., Pyrethrum Bds. Of Kenya

Barnes - St. Paul's Church, Kiambu Cemetery - 1907-1993

The Times - Longish obituary in The Times 3/2/1993 - on file

Rift Valley - Member of the Rift Valley Sports Club - Jan 1929 - Elected - 19 May 1927 - M. Blundell

Hut - Opera singer, Music, Cooking, Book of Kenya Plants

Gravestone at St Paul's Kiambu says - 'A Most Amazing Man'. One of the original '500' men in the Kenya Regt. In 1937. (KR 160).

For his early life as a farm hand for Brodhurst-Hill, see John Fox, 'Sir Michael Blundell, Apprentice Farmer' in Old Africa no 111, Feb-Mar 2024