Author(s): Sara Wheeler

Biographies & Memoirs

The Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton. Denys Finch Hatton was an aristocrat of leonine nonchalance. He was 6 foot 3 inches tall, and once lifted a car out of a ditch unaided. After a dazzling career at Eton and Oxford, he sailed in 1910 for British East Africa. There, in this earthly paradise, he first had an affair with the pantherine aviatrix Beryl Markham, and then - famously - with Karen Blixen. Too Close To The Sun tells the true story of this now legendary love affair, and recreates in telling detail the life of one of the key figures in the mythic story of the British settlers in East Africa. Finch Hatton was a soldier in the East Africa Campaign, a white hunter, a farmer, a pilot, the epitome of the brave pioneer.