DENYS FINCH HATTON FULL
It is both simply written and full of understated emotion. West with the Night is sometimes compared to Out of Africa, written by her friend Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), but I find Markham’s book to be much better. She was a remarkable woman, both Kenya’s first woman horse trainer and one of the world’s first woman pilots, the first person to fly east to west over the Atlantic (the more difficult direction). Here and there she interjects a few stories told to her by natives. The book is deeply interesting and thought-provoking. Instead, West with the Night is a series of recollections about Markham’s childhood and life in Africa, ending just after she flew across the Atlantic by herself. We do not hear, for example, that when her father first left British East Africa for Peru, she was married to her first husband. Most of the intimate details of her life are left out.
It is beautifully written, with evocative descriptions of Africa and insights into her own thinking.
Lovell effectively refutes these allegations, noting particularly that nothing like this was said the first time it was published and that part of the manuscript was submitted to a publisher before she met her third husband.Īctually, I don’t think anyone but Beryl Markham could have written West with the Night. When it was republished in the 1980’s, West with the Night was controversial because of Markham’s third ex-husband’s claim to have written most of the book and allegations by people who knew Markham that she was practically illiterate.
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