S.H. Fazan, CMG, CBE, 1888–1979, was a Provincial Commissioner in Kenya. A classical scholar of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1911 he sailed to British East Africa (Kenya) where he worked continuously for the next 31 years in agricultural and political development, being latterly also an ex-officio member of the Legislative Council. After war service he returned to Kenya between 1949 and 1963. His most notable appointments in these years were as a special magistrate, official historian of the Kikuyu ‘loyalists’ and member of both the Mau Mau Detainees Appeals Tribunal and the Committee for the Study of the Sociological Causes of Mau Mau.

John Lonsdale is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Emeritus Professor of Modern African History at the University of Cambridge.

‘Sidney Fazan was Britain's most important colonial officer serving in Britain's most important African colony. His voice is to be heard in every key discussion in Kenya's history from before the First World War until the Mau Mau rebellion. This edition of his personal writings, selected and superbly edited and annotated by John Lonsdale, will be an indispensible asset for any student of Kenya's colonial moment. This is a wonderful and immensely useful volume.’

David M. Anderson, Professor of African History, University of Warwick

‘For students of British Colonialism and especially development to independence this is an invaluable record. We are fortunate that the editor has revealed the importance of S.H. Fazan's work. I was fortunate to meet him, long after retirement, working on his colonial records in happy seclusion in Muguga near his home. Increasingly Fazan pointed to the rising population of Africans and the grievances which led to the Mau Mau insurrection. Renewed calls for change came from the United Nations and newly independent countries like Ghana exerted pressure. The United Kingdom decided to accelerate the programme with independence in East African countries, in Tanganyika in 1961, Uganda in 1962 and Kenya in 1963. Fazan's work had helped prepare the ground successfully for African rule.’

Sir John Johnson, former High Commissioner to Kenya