The Trust was saddened to read recently of the death of Sir Henry Neville Lindley Keswick (1938 – 2024) #991 on the web family tree, and we send our warmest condolences to his family.
Sir Henry’s wife Tessa (1942-2022) #999 was the daughter of Brigadier Simon Christopher Joseph Fraser DSO MC TD, 15th Baron Lovat (1911-1995) #2342 and Rosamond (Rosie) Delves Broughton (1917-2012).
The Brigadier was the 25th Chief of the Clan Fraser and was a decorated Marine Commander on Sword Beach for the WWII D-Day landings. His heroic story and that of his clan piper Bill Millin is told in his biography – HERE. But what we have not written about previously is Rosie’s relationship to the hedonistic Happy Valley set in Kenya in the 1940s.
Rosie’s father was Sir Henry John (Jock) Delves Broughton DL (1883-1942) #15202 the 11th Baronet who achieved some unwanted fame by standing trial for the murder of the 22nd Earl of Erroll. The Happy Valley set was an exclusive, tightly knit, and promiscuous circle in colonial Kenya behaving as an antidote to wartime Britain. Jock, born at Doddington Hall in Cheshire was a young Army officer when he married Vera Edyth Griffith-Boscawen (1894-1968) #15203 in 1913. He is said to have sold off thousands of acres of family lands to pay off gambling debts which may have contributed to his divorce. In 1940 he married a second time, Diana Caldwell and together they moved to Kenya.
Lord Erroll was found dead, shot in the head, in his car on the outskirts of Nairobi in January 1941. Because Diana had been very publicly carrying on an affair with Lord Erroll, Jock became a suspect but was acquitted for lack of evidence. The case hung on the fact that Jock’s pistol had 6 grooves but Erroll had been killed by a pistol with only 5 grooves. The set seems to have thought him guilty as he was ostracised and it may have been right as he ended his life by committing suicide in the Adelphi hotel in Liverpool.
Unsurprisingly, there have been a plethora of ‘suspects’ the most popular being Diana Caldwell but none have come to trial. An unsolved murder is irresistible to authors and film makers and this one was no exception. White Mischief by James Fox was published in 1982 and was followed by a film of the same name in 1987. Stories of a long-gone world!
Anthony Cobbold
