Many readers of the Spectator must have noted with regret
the death of Cleland Scott, who has contributed so many articles to its columns on aspects of Central Africa. The Times spoke of him as " one of the most colourful residents in Kenya," and, much though I dislike the adjective, I have to recognise that it is the right one here. I knew little of Scott personally, though he has called on me when in London, but the long letters which always accompanied his articles, or his suggestions for articles, made him strangely familiar I have been looking into one or-two of them at random. You get this kind of thing : " H/W an article on Rhino "; " It was due to having recently read Thomson's book Through Masai Land that I had the sense to shove my hand into the lion's mouth when he was standing over me when I was mauled. Admittedly I did not leave the said hand there in the approved fashion, 'cos it hurt like hell, but it probably saved a more vital bite "; " My firm, Trans-Africa, engaged a friend of mine to take our first real hunting safari and on the 4th day he got himself gored by a buffalo and died next day from fulminat- ing gas gangrene . . . What tickled me was that the hunter had been previously mauled by a lioness and met his Waterloo with a buff." There is no. doubt about colourful being the right word. Scott's first articles for the Spectator were on his pet lions, Romeo and Juliet. They secured him the commission for his first (and, so far as I know, only) book.
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