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With the stately lowering of the Union flag in December 1963, seventy years of British rule in Kenya came to an abrupt end. The effect of independence on white society was devastating. Thousands of second and third-generation settlers abandoned their homes and livelihoods, never to return. But what had attracted the European pioneers to settle in Kenya in the first place? And how, within little more than half a century, did white society develop from its early days of mud-floored shacks of corrugated iron to the sophisticated cities of Nairobi and Mombasa? For decades attention has focussed on the shenanigans of the louche denizens of Happy Valley, while the creators of one of Britain's most flourishing colonies have languished in obscurity.