White Mischief - The Happy Valley Murder
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Show Notes
Seekers!
Here's a true crime story that I've been sitting on for a while: The Mysterious death of Josslyn Hay, the 22nd Earl of Erroll and the scandalous lifestyles of the "Happy Valley Set," a group of British elites in Kenya during the early 20th century.
In 1941, a car was found idiling on a desolate road just outside of Nairobi.
Inside? A British aristocrat with a bullet in his brain.
This week's episode dives into one of the most notorious true stories to come out of the 1940s: the murder of Lord Erroll (Josslyn Hay), his not-so-secret love affair with Diana Delves Broughton (the wife of "Jock" Broughton), Jock's sham of a court case and the inevitable unraveling of the so-called Happy Valley Set - a group of white British colonials whose idea of paradoise was cocaine, cocktails and each other's spouses.
We trace how this band of British (and some American) aristocratic misfits fled post-war England for the Kenyan highlands, turned stolen land into personal playgrounds and built an illusion of civility that rotted from the inside out.
By the end, we're left with a question that still lingers over the entire enterprise: When there are no consequences no matter what you do, is it any surprise that all you have left to destroy is yourself?