Review by Hugh Macmillan (Historian and Research Associate, African Studies Centre, Oxford University)
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Judy Rawlinson, has written and self-published her
own very engaging and entertaining book - Finding a Flame Lily. The book
deals with her parents' exotic origins - her mother was of partly Spanish and
Anglo-Indian descent and met her husband in Burma - and her own
upbringing in wartime and post-war London. She spent five years with her
parents in Northern Rhodesia at Fort Rosebery - now Mansa - travelling to
school at Jean Rennie's in Lusaka and leaving for university in Liverpool in
1960. Her father had a job in the PWD and she provides a lively and frank
account of teenage life on a provincial boma in Luapula Province with sidetrips
to Samfya and Lake Bangweulu. Much of her social life was provided
by the young officials on the boma, and by her own brother who came out to
work on a research project. Among the people whom she encountered was
Lorna Gore-Browne - the estranged, and eccentric, wife of the equally
eccentric Sir Stewart Gore-Browne of Shiwa Ngandu - who was working on
a WHO project. Judy was aware of the emerging nationalist movement and
was certain that after her experiences at Fort Rosebery she could not study
at a South African university under apartheid.
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Author
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Judy Rawlinson
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Published
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2015
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Pages
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353
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Publisher
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Rawlinson Publications
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ISBN
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1907991131
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Availability
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Abebooks
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