Intermedial Relations in the British Press: Re-ordering the Empire amid the Kenyan Emergency

By Pascale Moko Foko

Edited by Borna Atrichian & Charlotte Pieper, Peer Reviewed by Sophie Bright

On the 21st of October 1952, The Times announced a State of Emergency had been declared in Kenya the previous day, reporting Governor Evelyn Baring’s decision to formalize colonial intervention against the insurgents. The newspaper identified the target of this intervention as members of the “Mau Mau,” a rebel movement whose acts of violence, it claimed, were motivated by anti-European sentiment. Commenting on the government’s final decision, The Times declared: “This step has been taken with great reluctance, but there was no alternative in the face of mounting lawlessness, violence, and disorder in a part of the colony.” The imperative of restoring the colonial order by intervening against the Mau Mau uprising was not affirmed only in The Times. Both conservative and liberal outlets concurred in depicting the rebel organization as an evil that urgently needed to be eradicated.

​Earlier historiographies have examined the nature of this consensus, particularly because the British journalistic landscape at the time reflected the distinct political orientations of each newspaper. Anne Wetherilt, for example, argues that the press converged in portraying Mau Mau as evidence of African “savagery” and “backwardness.” Historian Erik Linstrum further contends that the press’s jingoistic uniformity produced a paradox: in order to justify intervention during the Emergency, newspapers had to publicize the very violence whose visibility ultimately undermined the Empire’s existence. Such studies highlight how the Mau Mau uprising not only challenged Britons on the ground; it also unsettled the moral, political, and socioeconomic frameworks through which metropolitan readers understood African identities and agencies, as well as the legitimacy of imperial rule. Therefore, beyond simply reporting on the conflict’s developments, the British press helped shape the knowledge that sustained the Empire amid forces seeking to subvert it. Considering the diversity of political perspectives within the press, this paper asks: What journalistic practices did British newspapers use to construct knowledge about the Empire in Kenya and the Kenyan Emergency?

To respond to this, I apply the concept of intermediality, developed in literary and media studies, to the British press’ representation of the Mau Mau rebellion. In “Intermédialité, ou comment repenser les transmissions,” Éric Méchoulan argues that media are never autonomous but emerge through their relations with other media. Whereas “multimedia” refers to the juxtaposition of established forms of communication, intermediality highlights the processes through which media take shape when in contact with one another. Méchoulan also explains that tracing these intermedial relations reveals how knowledge is produced. Following this approach, this text examines how the press incorporated or contested literary texts’ perspectives on the situation in Kenya and the governance of the empire, thus mediating metropolitan understandings of the imperial Emergency.

More specifically, I argue that press coverage of Mau Mau relied on intermedial relations with literature to sustain or transform established imperial orders, portraying both the Empire and its decline as outcomes that ultimately served British interests. The analysis unfolds in three sections. First, I examine the Times coverage of the early years of the rebellion, which promoted King of the Wa-Kikuyu and Facing Mount Kenya to reinforce the imaginary of the “White Man’s Country.” Second, I consider the reaction of The Manchester Guardian and other liberal newspapers to the scandal at Kamiti detention camp. This section highlights the press’ role in reshaping moral conventions in the imperial context, shifting them from a transnational Christian framework, as imagined in The Pilgrim’s Progress, toward a secular understanding of justice and accountability. Finally, I analyze the role of Elspeth Huxley’s writings and the press’ engagement with them in portraying Britain as a benevolent presence in Kenya, shaping both the memory of the Empire and the perceptions of its postcolonial legacy. This paper is based primarily on digital archives of newspapers from the period, supplemented by relevant historiographies, in order to offer new interpretations of media coverage of the Mau Mau. Rather than aiming for exhaustiveness, it emphasizes specificity by focusing on three moments of the State of Emergency, situated at the beginning, middle, and end of the conflict, that reveal how the media worked to construct colonial imaginaries that were palatable to metropolitan audiences. It is essential to recover these intermedial narratives, as they help to complete the history of representations of the Empire at critical moments marked by extreme violence.

Disorder in the White Man’s Country

Every story begins with a disruptive element unsettling the established order. For the conservative Times, this order was the “White Man’s Country” formed in Kenya since the colonial conquest, and the disruptive element was the subversive behaviour of the Kikuyu people, the principal ethnic group involved in Mau Mau. Since the Scramble for Africa, Britainhad encouraged its subjects to settle in its new African territories to fulfill what it described as a moral obligation to “civilize” African peoples, guiding the inhabitants of the so-called Dark Continent toward modernity and progress. This call led White colonists of all socioeconomic backgrounds to seize large tracts of land, situated mainly in the temperate highlands of central Kenya. As historian Caroline Elkins notes, European settlement and land expropriation had their most significant impact on the Kikuyu. These agriculturalists lost more than sixty thousand acres and endured profound social consequences, as their social mobility and status depended on the accumulation of land. Many were confined to reserves outside their homeland, while others became squatters, that is, Africans living and working on European farms in the renamed region of the “White Highlands.” Thus, Kikuyu people were drawn into a colonial system that relied on their labour and political subordination to transform Kenya into the heartland of the White Man’s Country.

​ At the outbreak of the Mau Mau rebellion, The Times anxiously defended the colonial paradigm, notably by drawing on pre-Emergency literature about the Kikuyu. The “quality” newspaper primarily attracted a political and economic elite involved in domestic politics as well as colonial affairs. Its coverage of imperial anxieties regarding White governance in the Empire was already prominent before the rebellion erupted. Works of fiction and non-fiction were mobilized to counteract rebellious entities that exacerbated these anxieties.

Deeming the Kikuyu as such an entity, the Times invoked John Boyes’ autobiography King of the Wa-Kikuyu (1911), which recounts the author’s travels and alleged rise to paramount chief among the Kikuyu during the Matabele War (1893). Boyes describes his position as leader among the Kikuyu as follows:

My mission through the country had served to produce a spirit of friendship between the different clans and tribes which effectually put an end to the petty quarrelling and constant fighting which had hitherto gone on ; and from this time I was looked upon as practically the king of the country, all matters in dispute being referred to my judgment, and I was constantly being called upon to give counsel and advice upon every conceivable subject which affected the welfare of the people. The three most powerful chiefs in the country — Karuri, Karkerrie, and Wagombi — acknowledged me as their leader, and chiefs and people were now entirely under my control. As proof of the altered condition of the country, I could now send messengers to any one of the chiefs or headmen without any fear of their being attacked or molested on the way.

The Times amplified voices that used King of the Wa-Kikuyu as evidence that the Kikuyu had always welcomed Europeans because they supposedly recognized the benefits of the colonists’ mediating presence. In a letter to the editor, a former settler claimed that the Kikuyu had long been targets of neighbouring peoples, such as the Mari and the Masai, and that White settlement had “rescued” them from this hostile environment.

The Mari were the chief offenders, but others were perfectly ready to take a share in the sport. As a result of such treatment, which had been going on from time immemorial, the Kikuyu villages were sited on the edge of the forest into which the inhabitants could disappear when the alarm was sounded. On the surrounding plains they never venture and one night walk 20 miles in a day and see no living thing save vast hordes of game. From such an existence we rescued them, and we can have just pride in the achievement and their, surely, have some cause for gratitude.

The newspaper promoted Boyes’ account as proof that antipathy toward Europeans was never inherent among the Kikuyu, they welcomed protection from their aggressive neighbours. In this sense, John Boyes represented a leading example of the many settlers who acted as agents of peace and stability within Kikuyuland. In light of these observations, readers at the time may have been perplexed by the “sudden” rebellion of the Kikuyus against their most valuable allies.

On other occasions, the newspaper claimed that, despite the Kikuyu’s supposed acceptance of Boyes, their violent actions against Europeans were inevitable due to the “warlike” nature of the tribe. Framing Boyes’ rise as a personal triumph rather than evidence of Kikuyu goodwill, one article underscored how settlers perceived the group:

First, they were contrasted in the minds of the early settlers with their neighbours, the Masai, who happened to be one of the great warrior tribes; secondly, almost all writers on the Kikuyu agree that they are wily, suspicious, and deceitful. Then, as now, their mentality was that of guerilla. They preferred the tip-and-run rather than the standing battle, to strike at the weak rather than at the strong.

What becomes evident today is that relying on King of the Wa-Kikuyu as evidence was misleading as it presented an exceptional and ultimately distorted account of British–Kikuyu relations as typical. Historian Peter Rogers states that Boyes exaggerated his exploits and that his trading ventures were “modest in dimension and transitory in effect.” He also argues that the book’s disproportionate influence stemmed from its rarity and detailed descriptions of local disputes in Kikuyu territory. But for The Times, the autobiography fitted into the imperial myth of what Caroline Elkins called the “Pax Britannica,” a narrative portraying British expansion as a civilizing force that brought order, stability, and benevolent governance to regions depicted as chaotic and violent. By invoking King of the Wa-Kikuyu and its portrayal of the Kikuyu’s character, The Times reinforced this myth and raised a fundamental question: if the Kikuyu had once lived peacefully under European rule,  or at the very least restraining their supposed warlike nature, what had changed to provoke the violent insurgency led by the Mau Mau?

The Times answered by placing the blame on the Mau Mau leadership, then on the education received and provided by the Kikuyu. When Jomo Kenyatta was tried and convicted for allegedly leading the rebellion, public debate around his anthropological study Facing Mount Kenya (1938) resurfaced. The newspaper acknowledged that Kenyatta’s book contained numerous flaws yet maintained that it was “the best existing account of Kikuyu social organisation.” To support this claim, journalist Lord Hailey turned to the authority of the late Professor Bronisław Malinowski of the London School of Economics, under whom Kenyatta had studied in the 1930s and 1940s. He also notes that Kenyatta’s work had been evaluated by the Ethnological Survey of Africa and published by the International African Institute. Kenyatta’s education, charismatic personality, and proximity to British ideals of respectability earned him a degree of esteem among Times editors. Paradoxically, these qualities were also presented as evidence of the potential danger of African leadership in Kenya.

In fact, Kenyatta and Facing Mount Kenya challenged both imperial paradigms of the “civilizing mission” and White rule. On the one hand, Kenyatta embodied the goal of colonial uplift as he was an African who had mastered Western education and scholarly discourse. Yet, his example also suggested that “civilization” could produce subversive radical ideas and thus undermine British imperial authority. For instance, Facing Mount Kenya presents such subversive thought when explicitly questioning the ability of Western “experts” to produce relevant knowledge about Africa, arguing that scholars who did not come from the continent could never fully understand its societies. It also characterized White settlement as a form of territorial “theft,” a claim that the Times swiftly rejected:

There is no doubt that we have in the constant repetition of this charge by the Kikuyu political associations the dynamic which has given such strength to the Mau-Mau subversive movement. But the charge rests on a very slender basis of fact. The Land Commission of 1933 found that the proportion of the unequivocal Kikuyu land which had been alienated amounted only to about six per cent. Of Kikuyuland proper, and steps were afterwards taken to make up this loss to the tribe. No one reading this book would realize that the Kikuyu are in possession of over 1700 square miles of some of the best land in the Kenya Highlands.

For the most “civilized” representative of the Kikuyu to spread misinformation about the colony and discredit the Western expertise that had trained him, the Kikuyu must have had characteristics that limited the anticipated trajectory of the civilizing mission. The Times identified this characteristic as their “inherent recidivism,” which made the “backward” Kikuyu behaviour and customs resilient.  A Times’ correspondent in Nairobi highlighted that many Kikuyu people lived in rural areas and continued to be “subject, in their villages of mud-walled grass huts, to the tyranny of tribal laws and customs, witchcraft, and the mystical terrors of the old Africa.” He attributed this “pagan way of life” to their resentment of European influence and their desire to return to the state of Africa before colonialism. In this sense, the paradigm of a backward Africa is exemplified by the Kikuyu way of life after more than half a century of colonization, and their involvement in the rebel movement only served to reinforce the idea that the civilizing mission was justified.

Added to the Times’ discussion on Kikuyu recidivism was the assumption that education in Kenya was a key factor in incentivizing the Mau Mau to overthrow White rule. The newspaper identified the Kenya African Union’s (KAU) Independent School system as guilty of proliferating anti-European propaganda among younger generations. It claimed that, in the name of African nationalism, the schools condemned European land ownership in the Highlands, preached anti-Christian doctrines, and blasphemously taught hymns in which Kenyatta replaced the figure of Jesus. The paper also highlighted the importance of such institutions in the secrecy of Mau Mau: oath administrators could be disguised as teachers, and they could intimidate parents into enrolling their children. As historian Susan Carruthers adds, this discourse was part of a larger propagandistic agenda of the British government to portray Mau Mau as a senseless organization that antagonized the British way of thinking and living. The school system was then portrayed as perpetuating Kikuyu recidivism and promoting the violence associated with the Mau Mau movement.

In summary, The Times presented Kenya as the “White Man’s Country,” describing British rule as a civilizing and stabilizing force, and portraying the Kikuyu rebellion as a disruption of this imperial order. The press’s selective use of pre-Mau Mau works, written at very different historical moments, gave these works new purposes, integrating them into an epistemological system designed to legitimize the contemporary context of imperial counterinsurgency.

The Kamiti Scandal, Morality and Lessons from The Pilgrim’s Progress

​The press’ narrative of the Mau Mau Emergency was fraught with twists and turns, causing controversy among the British public. One of the most resounding controversies was raised by the Quaker missionary Eileen Fletcher in a series of articles published in Peace News and her pamphlet The Truth About Kenya. The press coverage of this scandal, especially in relations with ideas of Christian morality and femininity as understood in The Pilgrim’s Progress, demonstrated the secularization of British ideas of justice, which limited the impact ofwhistleblowers during Mau Mau.

For context, Fletcher detailed the abuses committed by the British authorities in the Kamiti Detention Camp. At that stage of the Emergency, detention camps had been publicly branded as sites for the rehabilitation of Mau Mau rebels. The Kamiti camp became more significant when an earlier androcentric view of the rebellion, characterizing women as victims and men as perpetrators, shifted toward a recognition of women’s involvement in Mau Mau and the building of a gender-blind punitive system. With villagization, or the forced relocation of Kikuyu people into government-supervised villages, Kamiti meant to undermine the role of Mau Mau women in supporting rebel civilian networks. By 1954, the camp was detaining approximately  2000 women.

Appointed by the Commissioner for Community Development and Rehabilitation, Fletcher designed new rehabilitation schemes, believing she was working within an institution that was Christian in intent. However, what she encountered in the seven months following December 1954 was radically different. In her eyewitness account, The Truth About Kenya, Fletcher exposed the camp’s inhumane machinery: torture during interrogation (“screening”), indefinite confinement, forced labor and malnutrition. Her revelations were accompanied by striking photographs of children behind barbed-wire fences and women rounded up by police, alongside headlines accusing Kamiti of perpetrating White supremacy, and condemning innocents to death. Fletcher’s testimony demonstrated that detainees were treated like prisoners of war in a punitive system that failed to meet the imperial standards of respectability. Her denunciations reverberated across numerous newspapers, raising urgent questions about the conduct of the counterinsurgency and its implications for human rights.

Fletcher’s work at Kamiti, as well as her report of the institution, were articulated through the lens  of transnational Christian ideas about morality and femininity. In 1956, she published an article in the Manchester Guardian explaining the roots of the rehabilitation scheme she built. Believing that telling Christian fables was similar to the pedagogical methods used in Kikuyu culture, she gave women detainees lessons that drew on The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). John Bunyan’s Christian allegory follows the journey of a man named Christian on his symbolic path to salvation. More importantly, the second part of Bunyan’s allegory presents Christiana, Christian’s wife, as a model of femininity defined through domestic roles and moral virtue. Her journey offers an image of women’s agency, but one that remains embedded within gendered social norms: Christiana’s authority arises from her role as mother and moral guide, and her spiritual path is understood as an extension of her husband’s journey. Her story thus emphasizes feminine virtues that are synonymous with passivity, submission, and reliance on male leadership. Fletcher made sure she mirrored Christiana’s symbol in the education she delivered to women in Kamiti, especially since these women had been convicted as agents of violence and social disruption — the very antagonists of Bunyan’s ideal of femininity. She taught women detainees how to become effective homemakers and child bearers, as well as provided training in literacy. This Quaker-inspired approach to rehabilitation, she claimed, transformed the women convicts from treating her with enmity to friendliness.

Eileen Fletcher’s engagement with The Pilgrim’s Progress gains particular significance in view of the text’s transnational circulation. As Isabel Hofmeyer observes, the work circulated across the British Empire as a tool for Nonconformist Christians, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, and others dissenting from the Church of England, to legitimize overseas missions while maintaining domestic support. Translated religious texts, such as Bunyan’s allegory, publicized mission work and fostered a belief in a shared moral framework among diverse peoples. Fletcher also drew on England’s “Basic Education Scheme,” part of UNESCO’s literacy program promoting education as a means of peace and development. By combining The Pilgrim’s Progress with transnational development ideas, Fletcher advocated moral values that supported women’s “respectable” education, values that resonated with British audiences while framing them as beneficial within the rehabilitation policy in the Mau Mau Emergency. By denouncing the inhumane fate of Kamiti detainees, she created spaces for public discussion on those shared values. She hoped to rehabilitate the victims of Kamiti prison as individuals who could potentially embody these ideals of morality and progress.

In liberal newspapers, Fletcher’s story found a more receptive audience as these outlets were more willing to engage with critiques of colonialism and platform dissident voices in the Emergency. The Manchester Guardian, for example, often reported public statements by Fenner Brockway, the prominent anticolonialist leader in the House of Commons. The newspaper reports here the impression of the MP of Fletcher’s character : “Mr Brockway told the Manchester Guardian yesterday that he was raising the matter because at his meeting with Eileen Fletcher he had been deeply impressed by her sincerity, reliability and professional ability. ‘I am also impressed by her record of fourteen years in the Government service,’ he said.”

However, liberal newspapers remained largely skeptical toward Fletcher’s revelations, revealing the extent to which imperial notions of moral justice had become secularized. The Manchester Guardian, for instance, repeatedly stressed that the Kamiti scandal represented an exceptional failure within the colonial judiciary rather than evidence of systemic abuse. A letter to the editor by the General Secretary of the Christian Council of Kenya insisted that the events Fletcher described were outdated and did not reflect the government’s ongoing efforts to prevent such deviations from justice. He maintained that such incidents were declining and Fletcher’s account was “misleading” and failed to provide a balanced picture. In response, another reader rejected the General Secretary’s accusation that Fletcher lacked a balanced perspective, while nevertheless reiterating that her purpose was to expose an exceptional flaw in the punitive system. This exchange illustrates how the secular framework of justice shaped discussions of imperial moral responsibility. While Fletcher drew on both transnational Christian ideas of morality and formal justice, liberal newspapers reframed her critique solely in terms of institutional responsibility.

Returning to The Pilgrim’s Progress, Hofmeyer also notes that following the First World War, Nonconformist evangelicalism lost ground as a public intellectual force. On the contrary, secular ideas that sought to give Britons a distinct racial and cultural identity, both within the country and throughout the empire, eventually replaced this transnational moral paradigm. In this context, discussions on morality were less dependent on Christian universalist ideas and more attuned to racialized hierarchies. Fletcher’s engagement with Bunyan thus intersected with a moral environment where her Christian rhetoric in reporting the abuses in the Kamiti detention camp was less impactful.

This secular framework also shaped the gendered perception of the victims in the Kamiti scandal. Both The Manchester Guardian and the Daily Herald focused heavily on the imprisonment of juveniles while giving far less attention to the fate of women detainees. The Manchester Guardian primarily covered parliamentary debates concerning the credibility of Fletcher’s accusations and the potential violation of Kenya’s Juvenile Offenders Ordinance, which prohibited the detention of children under fourteen. The Daily Herald featured more sensationalist headlines, such as “They’re ‘lifers’ at 12,” which deplored the “terrified” condition of the child convicts. What stands out is that although women occupied a central place in Fletcher’s testimony, the press’ attention gravitated toward children. As Katherine Bruce-Lockhart argues, femininity and childhood were key frameworks through which Fletcher sought to elevate Kamiti into a matter of imperial urgency. Yet in the secular framing of the liberal press, childhood, constructed as a universal category of innocence, overrode the specifically gendered violence. As Bruce-Lockhart explains here, the press mirrored the government depiction of Mau Mau women:

In the case of the Kamiti controversy, the government portrayed Kenyan females as violent. […] Further ballast for this argument was provided by the international media, which claimed that Mau Mau women had become “every bit as fanatical as their menfolk.” One article in a Canadian newspaper gave accounts of young girls who were imprisoned for “serious activities on behalf of the terrorists,” such as a sixteen-year-old girl who served as a judge in a Mau Mau court and “sentenced many Africans to death.”

As mentioned earlier, women were then included in a broader concept of perpetrators of insurgent violence. They were no longer entitled to the qualities of innocence and vulnerability that Fletcher had associated with femininity (as symbolized by Bunyan’s Christiana). In this way, the secular framing of the press not only marginalized women’s victimhood but erased the possibility of their rehabilitation into innocence, even in the face of the brutal treatment they suffered at the hands of the colonial authorities.

​While Fletcher’s revelations did spark debates about the legitimacy of counterinsurgency methods, their influence on metropolitan views of colonial violence remained limited, particularly because liberal newspapers’ secular notions of justice did not fully capture the significance of Kamiti’s abuses or the extent of the victims’ suffering. This case study illustrates implicit intermedial relationships, in that the press indirectly challenged previously established moral principles of the Empire. Ultimately, the liberal press’ focus on secular moral justice constrained the impact of Fletcher’s whistleblowing on metropolitan recognition of the human rights abuses inherent in the Mau Mau detention camps.​

A Favourable Resolution: The End-of-Empire according to Elspeth Huxley and the British Press

Finally, like all stories, the Mau Mau rebellion came to an end. By 1959, the majority of the rebel forces had been neutralized by the colonial government, their leadership had been either imprisoned or executed, and loyalists had taken control over Kikuyu territory. Yet, as historian David Anderson notes, the imperial power did not feel like a victor. The Kenyan conflict had brought global attention to the colonial violence perpetrated throughout the war. After Kamiti, many scandals came to light, such as the Hola massacre, in which eleven detainees were beaten to death and many more were injured after refusing to take part in hard labour. The attempt by the detention administration to hide this massacre made headlines and reignited public debates about the Empire’s raison d’être. At the same time, the global wave of decolonization made the end of the British Empire inevitable. While it was difficult for the British to control how the Empire would end, it was still possible to influence how decolonization was perceived in the metropole, particularly through shaping memories of the colonial past and planning the postcolonial future.

In this context, the British press turned to the voice of Elspeth Huxley, a British novelist and journalist who grew up in Kenya, to reiterate the symbol of a benevolent Britain. Huxley’s work belonged to the female middlebrow novel, a literary genre that significantly shaped popular perceptions of decolonization.  Rather narrating the politics of Britain’s End-of-Empire, middlebrow fiction narrated decolonization through the lived experiences of Britons on the ground Literary scholar Anne Wetherilt defines middlebrow literature as the product of the author’s “careful balance between meeting and challenging readers’ expectations.” This genre particularly appealed to middle-class women, who were considered culturally influential tastemakers. By engaging with Huxley and this particular readership, the press was able to mold perceptions of colonialism and Britain’s benevolence into a single metanarrative.

Firstly, the press’ promotion of The Flame Trees of Thika fueled popular nostalgia for the colonial past. Published in 1959, this autobiographical novel recounts Huxley’s childhood in Kenya and the early experiences of British settlers in East Africa. The weekly magazine Country Life introduced the book thus: “It was in Kenya. Nairobi, then, had not become a sophisticated capital, and the Kikuyu had not become in the indiscriminate popular imagination ‘the Mau Mau.’ Things went with reasonable smoothness between the native inhabitants and the settlers. It was a wonderful time and a wonderful place to be growing in.” The Scotsman praised the ingenuity of the author and her parents as they learned to navigate new forms of human and natural knowledge, and The Observer regarded it as one of the few memoirs of life in Africa that achieved such quality. This widely favourable reception is significant given that Huxley wrote the book at a moment when Kenyan independence was imminent. Knowing that decolonization was imminent, she sought to sanitize Britain’s imperial legacy, whatever her own political stances may have been. Patricia Lorcin adds that the success of the novel was enabled by Huxley’s reputation as an Africanist and “a moderate with expert knowledge, [someone] in the best position to describe what Kenya had been about.” The press and public therefore saw Huxley’s Flame Trees of Thika as an authentic way to reminisce about the colonial past. It fed into nostalgic sentiments about the end of the Empire by offering a vision of colonial Kenya untainted by the violence later associated with Mau Mau.

On the other hand, the press’ discussion on A New Earth (1960) encouraged Britain’s post-independence paternalistic relations with Kenya, understood under the guise of benevolence. This memoir was Huxley’s account of Kenya’s social and political landscape during the final years of the colonial period. It explained how Britain was responsible for helping Kenyans in their planning of the country’s future, especially when it came to land management.The Scotsman reiterates this lasting relationship here :

Much remains to be done. Mrs Huxley’s evidence seems to show that only by a reorganization of society which brings landholdings to their most productive economic level will the increase of population be supported in the absence of new industries. Certainly the Africans will need white technicians for many years to come. Mrs Huxley performs many useful services in this admirable book: one of them is to underline tacitly the need for a genuine partnership of the races.

This positive reception of the book becomes even more significant when juxtaposed with Jomo Kenyatta’s nation-building policies following his imprisonment and at the outset of his rule in Kenya. By the time of Kenyatta’s release in 1961, the British press had largely abandoned the radicalized rebel image attached to him since the advent of the rebellion, portraying him instead as a great reconciler who had never endorsed the extreme violence associated with Mau Mau. His land management policies were reformist in nature: he insisted that all Kenyans, particularly former Mau Mau detainees, purchase the land that had once been expropriated, thereby maintaining the socioeconomic standing of the elite who had benefited from the colonial political economy. The British press endorsed this cautious approach to land redistribution, emphasizing that property should not fall into the hands of the “riot hooligans” of Mau Mau. It also highlighted the continued value of British agricultural methods, especially after Mau Mau, as exemplified in this Times article : “[Progress] has stridden the farthest in Kikuyuland because the Mau Mau emergency put out of the circulation those politicians who had been preaching resistance to everything designed to improve the African lot, from artificial insemination and cattle-dipping to terracing and tree-planting.” In this way, the reception of Huxley’s work helped consolidate a narrative in which Britain’s colonial legacy was imagined as indispensable to Kenya’s stability. It allowed the press to frame decolonization not as a moment of rupture, but as the promise of a continued relationship between Britain and the nation it claimed to have benevolently guided toward progress.

One of the most important ways middlebrow novelists met their readership’s tastes was by fulfilling their desire for a resolution. While Huxley’s bibliography had shaped public understanding at multiple stages of the Kenyan Emergency (Red Strangers fictionalizing the years preceding the rebellion, and A Thing to Love depicting the politics of colonial intervention) it became even more influential as the conflict drew to a close. As public opinion increasingly rejected the violence of counterinsurgency and grew more receptive to decolonization, the intermedial relationship between the press and Huxley’s works sustained a benevolent image of Empire, encouraging readers to interpret its legacy favorably despite the undeniable violence that had taken place.

Conclusion

This study shows how the British press shaped metropolitan understandings of the Mau Mau Emergency through implicit and explicit intermedial conversations with autobiographical writings, ethnographies, religious allegories, and fictions. Rather than simply reporting events of the rebellion, conservative and liberal newspapers strategically sustained or transformed moral and sociopolitical imperial orders to maintain Britain’s grandeur. Thus, in the face of brutal colonial violence, metropolitan readers could still view Britain as a morally legitimate and stabilizing power and consume narratives framing the Empire’s actions as benevolent and necessary for the advancement of civilization.

While this paper has focused on the press, the intermedial dynamics it reveals were not limited to print. Audiovisual media—newsreels, BBC broadcasts, Illustrated London Newscovers, and Universal News footage—participated in the same processes, reinforcing and extending the narratives constructed in newspapers. As Erik Linstrum notes, newsreels depicted civilians, especially women, as resilient combatants, while coverage of colonial Britons highlighted settler courage. In this sense, audiovisual media added a new layer of intermediality, further blurring the boundaries between the collective imagination and the realities presented by institutions with specific political agendas. This dynamic remains highly relevant today, as evolving media technologies continue to shape how individuals engage with and interpret the world around them.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Boyes, John. King of the Wa-Kikuyu: A true story of travel and adventure in Africa. Methuen & co., 1911. https://archive.org/details/b24877025/page/n23/mode/2up

Cranworth and Marjorie Nicholson. “Violence In Kenya.” Times, November 29, 1952, 7. The Times Digital Archive. https://link-gale-com.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/apps/doc/CS118706045/GDCS?u=crepuq_mcgill&sid=bookmark-GDCS&pg=7&xid=c4485d9e.

Colonial Correspondent. “Background To Mau Mau.” Times, March 1, 1954, 7. The Times Digital Archive. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS119755361/TTDA?u=crepuq_mcgill&sid=bookmark-TTDA&pg=7&xid=d668854f.

Fletcher, Eileen. “Rehabilitation Work Among Mau Mau Women: Fables from ‘Pilgrim Progress.’” The Manchester Guardian, June 23, 1953. Newspapers by Ancestry. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/259488199/?match=1&terms=%22pilgrim%27s%20progress%22

Huxley, Elspeth. “Transformation Scene in Kenya.” Sunday Times, May 17, 1959, 13. TheSunday Times Historical Archive. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/FP1801669797/GDCS?u=crepuq_mcgill&sid=bookmark-GDCS&pg=13&xid=8f633663.

“Kenya Childhood.” The Scotsman, March 14, 1959. British Newspaper Archive. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000540/19590314/243/0013?browse=False

“Kenya’s Good Earth.” The Scotsman, July 16, 1960. British Newspaper Archive. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000540/19600716/148/0006?browse=False

Kenyatta, Jomo. Facing Mount Kenya. Secker and Warburg, 1938. https://archive.org/details/facingmountkenya0000jomo/page/309/mode/1up

London Staff. “Children in Kenya Prisons” M.P.’s Question on ‘Life Sentence.’” Manchester Guardian, May 25, 1956. Newspapers by Ancestry. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/259480024/?match=1&terms=%22kamiti%20women%22b

Lord Hailey. “Kenyatta on his Own Tribe.” Sunday Times, April 12, 1953, 5. The Sunday Times Historical Archive. https://link-gale-com.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/apps/doc/FP1800661592/GDCS?u=crepuq_mcgill&sid=bookmark-GDCS&pg=5&xid=c48f4748.

Mack, Mary. “One Woman Starts A Storm.” Daily Herald, June 6, 1956. British Newspaper Archive. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000681/19560606/103/0008?browse=False

“Miss Flechter’s Allegations.” Manchester Guardian, October 22, 1956. Newspapers by Ancestry. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-guardian/186470573/

Monkhouse, Patrick. “Good news out of Africa.” The Guardian, August 5, 1960. Newspapers by Ancestry. https://www.newspapers.com/image/259456526/?terms=%22elspeth%20huxley%22%20a%20new%20earth

Morrison, S. A.. “Letter to the Editor: ‘The truth About Kenya.’’’ Manchester Guardian, July 5, 1956. Newspapers by Ancestry. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/259490932/?match=1&terms=%22the%20truth%20about%20kenya%22

Nairobi Correspondent. “Nature Of Mau Mau.” Times, October 24, 1952, 6. The Times Digital Archive. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS101928792/TTDA?u=crepuq_mcgill&sid=bookmark-TTDA&pg=6&xid=e8f01c99.

Plomer, William. “Lucky Little Elspeth.” The Observer, March 1, 1959. The Observer Digital Archive. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/257818659/?match=1&terms=%22flame%20trees%20of%20thika%22

Special Correspondent in Kenya. “Nationalism In Kenya.” Times, November 13, 1952, 7. The Times Digital Archive. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS118968173/TTDA?u=crepuq_mcgill&sid=bookmark-TTDA&pg=7&xid=a7f2670f.

Special Correspondent. “New Order on Force in Kenya Camps.” Daily Telegraph, June 17, 1959, 1. The Telegraph Historical Archive. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/IO0703894815/GDCS?u=crepuq_mcgill&sid=bookmark-GDCS&pg=1&xid=18e04edd.

Special Correspondent. “State Of Emergency In Kenya.” Times, October 21, 1952, 6. The Times Digital Archive. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS100880213/TTDA?u=crepuq_mcgill&sid=bookmark-TTDA&pg=6&xid=3c5e2655.

Special Correspondent. “The White Man In Africa.” Times, April 13, 1953, 6. The Times Digital Archive. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS102584461/TTDA?u=crepuq_mcgill&sid=bookmark-TTDA&pg=6&xid=ff8d7b75.

Spring, Howard. “Childhood in the African Wilds.” Country Life, March 26, 1959. British Newspaper Archive. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/9900007/19590326/163/0063?browse=False

Tyson, Olive. “The Truth About Kenya: To the Editor of the Manchester Guardian.” Manchester Guardian, July 14, 1956. Newspapers by Ancestry. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/259493515/?match=1&terms=%22the%20truth%20about%20kenya%22

“They’re ‘Lifers’ at 12.” Daily Herald, May 30, 1956. British Newspaper Archive. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000681/19560530/122/0007?browse=False

Secondary sources

Anderson, David. Histories of the Hanged : The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. 1st American ed.,W.W. Norton, 2005.

Blood, Hilary. “The Flame Trees of Thika.” African Affairs 58, no. 232, 1959: 260-261. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a094662

Breen, Margaret Soenser. “The Sexed Pilgrim’s Progress.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 32, no. 3 (1992): 443–60. https://doi.org/10.2307/450915.

Bruce-Lockhart, Katherine. “‘The “Truth’ about Kenya: Connection and Contestation in the 1956 Kamiti Controversy.” Journal of World History 26, no. 4 (2016): 815-838. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jwh.2016.0062.

Carruthers, Susan L.. Winning Hearts and Minds : British Governements, the Media and Colonial Counter-Insrgency 1944-1960. Leicester University Press, 1995.

Cooper, Frederick. “Mau Mau and the Discourses of Decolonization.” The Journal of African History 29, no. 2 (1988): 313–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700023707.

Elkins, Caroline. Imperial Reckoning : The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya. 1st ed. Henry Holt and Co., 2005.

Hofmeyer, Isabel. The Portable Bunyan: A Transnational History of The Pilgrim’s Progress. Princeton University Press, 2004.

Linstrum, Erik. Age of Emergency : Living with Violence at the End of the British Empire. Oxford University Press, 2023.

Lorcin, Patricia M. E. Historicizing Colonial Nostalgia : European Women’s Narratives of Algeria and Kenya 1900-Present. 1st ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Eric Méchoulan, « Intermédialité, ou comment penser les transmissions », Fabula / Les colloques, « Création, intermédialité, dispositif. »https://www.fabula.org/colloques/document4278.php

Richards, Audrey. “A New Earth: An Experiment in Colonialism and Land and Politics among the Luguru of Tanganyika.” International Affairs 37, no. 2, 1961 : 258-259. https://doi.org/10.2307/2611917

Rogers, Peter. “The British and the Kikuyu 1890-1905: A Reassessment.” The Journal of African History 20, no. 2 (1979): 255–69. http://www.jstor.org/stable/181517.

Wetherilt, Anne. British Decolonization and the Female Middlebrow Novel. Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-92325-8.