Books like The flame trees of Thika by Elspeth Huxley

Beryl Markham's memoir chronicles her daring career as a pioneering woman aviator and lecturer in East Africa, blending biography, travel description, and reflections on aerial exploration.

Laurie Lee chronicles a young man's journey from the Cotswolds to London and then through Spain on the eve of civil war, capturing the country’s beauty and turmoil with lyrical clarity.

Samuel Pepys (23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an administrator of the navy of England and Member of Parliament. The detailed private diary that Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire of London. Pepys recorded his daily life for almost ten years. Pepys has been called the greatest diarist of all time due to his frankness in writing concerning his own weaknesses and the accuracy with which he records events of daily British life and major events in the 17th century. Pepys wrote about the contemporary court and theater, his household, and major political and social occurrences. Historians have been using his diary to gain greater insight and understanding of life in London in the 17th century. Pepys wrote consistently on subjects such as personal finances, the time he got up in the morning, the weather, and what he ate. He talked at length about his new watch which he was very proud of (and which had an alarm, a new thing at the time), a country visitor who did not enjoy his time in London because he felt that it was too crowded, and his cat waking him up at one in the morning. Pepys's diary is one of the only known sources which provides such length in details of everyday life of an upper-middle-class man during the seventeenth century. His diary reveals his jealousies, insecurities, trivial concerns, and his fractious relationship with his wife. It has been an important account of London in the 1660s. Aside from day-to-day activities, Pepys also commented on the significant and turbulent events of his nation. England was in disarray when he began writing his diary. Oliver Cromwell had died just a few years before, creating a period of civil unrest and a large power vacuum to be filled. Pepys had been a strong supporter of Cromwell, but he converted to the Royalist cause upon the Protector’s death. He was on the ship that brought Charles II home to England. He gave a firsthand account of events, such as the coronation of King Charles II and the Restoration of the British Monarchy to the throne, the Anglo-Dutch war, the Great Plague, and the Great Fire of London.

Lawrence Anthony, a South African wildlife conservationist, accepts a sanctuary for a herd of rogue elephants, risking his reserve to give the animals a second chance at life.

An autobiography of a young English woman who spent her formative years in India, recounting her marriage and the challenges of bringing up two children alone in poverty.

Elspeth Huxley reflects on her life in Kenya after the famous *Flame Trees of Thika*, recalling the people, places, and her 1983 visit.

An exploration of Africa’s natural and cultural landscapes through photographs and essays.

Penelope Lively’s memoir, Oleander, Jacaranda, traces her childhood in 1930s–40s Egypt, from fellaheen villages to the Gezira Sporting Club, blending vivid memories of Nile wildlife with reflections on culture and identity.

A boy’s first-hand recollection of post‑war Britain, detailing victory bonfires, rationing, prefab houses, and beach rescues, while showing his growth as an artist amid the nation’s rebuilding.

Samuel Pepys, a naval administrator and diarist, kept a private diary that captures the turbulent world of Restoration London and explores his inner life of relations with women, fears and ambitions, and political shifts.

War Boy is an illustrated memoir by English artist Michael Foreman, recounting his childhood experiences during World War II in Britain.

Visiting her mother's old friend Isabel Castillo in Mexico, Laura was hoping to draw on local colour as the background for her new novel. She did better than that in fact from Isabel's lordly nephew Roman she found the model for her romantic hero. But romantic heroes are not always noted for the more desirable real-life qualities of niceness and kindness and nor was Roman. She would be very foolish Laura soon realized to fall in love with him. For no woman it was clear; not even a wife would hold Roman Castillo's interest for very long. Hero: Ramon Castillo Heroine: Isabel Castillo

Fanny Burney’s journals and letters chronicle her life from London society through court service to exile in France, offering candid portraits of figures like George III, Samuel Johnson, and Napoleon.