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Name: BROWN, George Huntly Hilton

Nee: bro of Leslie Brown, dep Director of Agriculture

Birth Date: 22 Mar 1924 Hampstead, London

Death Date: 2002 Spain

First Date: 1950

Profession: DO Machakos 1950, DO Garissa 1953; Kipini 1952, DC Wajir 1957-8, DC Machakos 1959, DC Samburu 1960

Area: Garissa, Wajir

Married: Yes

Book Reference: Dusty, Peter Fullerton email

War Service: Royal Navy

School: Highgate, Gordonstoun, St Andrew's Univ.

General Information:

Dusty - Twink was, perhaps, the most erudite officer in the service, addicted to composing Greek odes on palm trees in the sunset, or crocodiles in the Tana River. He was also extremely efficient.
An enormous, freckled, raw-boned Scot, tough and cunning as a buffalo, with a heart of gold and feet like boats, known to his colleagues as Twinkletoes.
Peter Fullerton email: After Independence  he went as a Game Warden to Ethiopia. I never met him again, and he never joined the Kenya Administration Club. He was a bachelor all that time  in Africa but long after he retired he married  (name?)  who had been the Principal of Girton College, Cambridge.  They had met in Machakos years ago when she was an Education Officer there and he was DO.They retired to Spain together, and George died there in 2002.   His wife died much later, maybe 2010.  I happened to read her obituary in The Times which is where I first heard of their marriage.

I never met George Brown again after 1953 in Kipini.   He was a large man, 6’ 4” with shaggy fair hair.  He had a short fuse and seemed to have contempt for most people, white and black. Someone once told him that he was the rudest man in Kenya.  He replied:  “Not true.  My brother is”.  His brother was Leslie Brown, the Deputy Director of Agriculture in Kenya. George Brown was known in Kenya as “Marmalade Joe”  because it was said he only ate bread and jam until supper time.  He was an able and stern  DC.   He was well read in history , and I got on well with him as his DO. There is a good description of him in “Colony to Nation” (pages 129-130) by Ian Willis, his DO in Samburu.  

 

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