#white mischief

Charles Dance

You will surely smile with me when I say, 'Thank God one can still recognise self-pity as such and not give it any greater dignity than just that.

- James Fox, White Mischief 

The scandalous murder of Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll, in 1941, is the stuff of African legend. So, too, is White Mischief, which was based on the sordid tale of his demise and published 40 years later. That gripping tome, which became a roaring best seller and is still in print. The novel itself is a wild and wicked romp through the expatriate community around Nairobi, Kenya, during World War II.

"Happy Valley" was a watchword for hedonistic excess. Infamous for its adherence to the "three A's" - altitude, alcohol and adultery - and located in the spectacular highlands of Kenya, it was socially closed to all but the most moneyed and aristocratic of British expats, becoming synonymous with scandal and self-indulgence.

One such indulger was the notorious rake, Joss Hay, whose particular specialty was to have his way with other men's wives and flaunt it. Inevitably, he did so once too often; and at the height of the Blitz, aged all of 39, yet comfortably removed from the vicissitudes of war, his body was found on a road outside Nairobi with a bullet in his brain.

In the ensuing uproar, during which the feudal community was peeled back like an orange for all to see, Hay's final cuckold, Sir Henry "Jock" Delves Broughton, became the prime suspect. At the trial that followed, in which his own defense was delivered with unflappable calm, he was amazingly acquitted, and the entire affair became, internationally, an instant cause celebre.

James Fox is rightly credited with writing this remarkable book, but much of the donkey work had already been researched with none other than Cyril Connolly, whose own fascination for the topic had let to a joint expose in The Sunday Times in 1969, and which he assiduously pursued until his death. Fox pursued the tale in turn, travelling to Kenya to do so; and it was there that he stumbled on the one piece of evidence that brought the scandalous tale together.

For related amusement (and further indulgence), one should perhaps read The Temptress, which lays bare, as it were, Joss Hay's own affair with the French adventuress, Alice de Janze. That femme fatale, whose infamy extended to shooting one of her lovers in Paris and becoming a fictional figure in Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, is a tale in itself, but either or both of these books remain a feast for gossipy eyes.

White Mischief (1987) - Greta Scacchi as Lady Diana Broughton wearing a red silk evening dress with off-shoulder neckline and ruffles on the bodice. The accessories include diamond jewellery.