KENYA COWBOY: A Police Officer's Account of the Mau Mau Emergency
PETER HEWITTwas born in Windsor with the Great Depression looming; his adolescent years were passed in Reading, also on the Thames. At age 18, he was conscripted and served for eight years in the Fleet Air Arm. Upon release he entered Colonial Police Service, a career change that took him first to Kenya, followed by tours in Cyprus and Nyasaland. His police career concluded with a nine-year spell in the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary. Retuning to England in 1972 he took up an appointment with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where a succession of postings took him to diplomatic missions in Sierra Leone, East Berlin (GDR), Guyana and Lisbon— until a surfeit of ‘foreign parts’ prompted him and his wife to settle in the north London suburb. There was to be, however, one final call of the wild that he felt unable to resist and so took off again for Sierra Leone where he was engaged by a large diamond-mining company in a senior security role. This post-colonial swansong persuaded him that retirement might be the preferred option. Since then he has alternated between Cockfosters and a ‘bolthole’ in north Cyprus.