John Nottingham

John Cato Nottingham was born on 25 February 1928 in Coventry, United Kingdom. He was the son of Captain Eric Cato Nottingham, who had served in the British military in the colonies of Nigeria and the Gold Coast. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and, after graduating in 1946, was conscripted into the British Army, being subsequently stationed in Northern Ireland and Germany. In 1949 he left the army and enrolled in Oxford University, studying politics, philosophy and economics.[1]

At the urging of his father,[2] he applied for a job with the British colonial service. In July 1952 the service accepted his application and made him a cadet on probation, while he received specialised training at Oxford for a colonial posting, including instruction in Kiswahili.[1]

Nottingham traveled by ship to Mombasa, Kenya Colony in December 1952 and was immediately appointed District Officer of Nyeri.[1]

John Nottingham, a Brit who immigrated to Kenya to work for the British colonial government. John left the UK, thinking he was going to do noble work in Kenya but was astounded by the racism and abuse of the British government. John never fit in with the Brits, in fact, he married a local woman, and sort of became a pariah to the white community. Years after Kenya gained independence, John continued to live in Kenya and was unsettled by the untold stories of British brutality and lack of accountability. In 2005, he joined hands with an American professor, who wanted to expose Britains gulags in Kenya. Their work included recording interviews from people who had been imprisoned in concentration camps by the British government. The stories were filled with pain, horror, trauma, and lack of accountability of the English government. The book - Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya - was the first to have a documented account of this brutality. Caroline, the author, went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. It took a white woman to tell the stories of traumatized Kenyans, for the British government to cave in and acknowledge the brutality of its regime, and further compensation of victims.

For several years Nottingham was Publishing Director at East African Publishing House,[3] helping General China write his two books on Mau Mau and publishing Song of Lawino by Okot p'Bitek. Nottingham later founded his own publishing company, Transafrica Publishers.[4]

Nottingham eventually retired to Cherry Tree Farm in Redhill, Kiambu County, Kenya.[4] He died in 2018,[1] and was buried at Cherry Tree Farm.[4]

• 'Sorcery among the Akamba in Kenya, Journal of African Administration, Vol. 11 (1959), pp. 2-14
• (with Clyde Sanger) 'The Kenya General Election of 1963', Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (March 1964), pp. 1-40
• (with Carl Gustav Rosberg) The myth of "Mau Mau": nationalism in Kenya. Stanford, Calif.: Published for the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace by Praeger, New York, 1966.
• 'Establishing an African Publishing Industry: A Study in Decolonization', African Affairs, Vol. 68, No. 271 (April 1969), pp. 139-144