Kenneth Gandar-Dower

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Kenneth Cecil Gandar-Dower (born August 31, 1908 in Regent's Park , London , England ; † February 12, 1944 in the Indian Ocean near the Maldives ) was a British author , journalist , athlete , pilot , pacifist and war correspondent . In his early years he became known as an athlete, while later he mainly acted as an author and, after the outbreak of war, also as a war correspondent.

Youth and education

Kenneth Gandar-Dower was born in London in 1908 as the youngest of four children to the wealthy Joseph Wilson Gandar-Dower and his wife Amelia Frances Germaine. Two of his older brothers, Eric and Alan , served as members of the Conservative Party in the British House of Commons . As a child he read the works of Henry Rider Haggard enthusiastically and at the age of eight he showed an interest in writing himself. Gandar-Dower attended Harrow School , where he was actively involved in sports and played cricket , soccer , fives and rackets . In collaboration with his friend Terence Rattigan , he also wrote during this time for the weekly school newspaper The Harrovian . He was also awarded a silver medal for an essay on William Shakespeare .

In 1927 he received a scholarship to Trinity College at Cambridge University . There he studied history . Once again he devoted himself to sporting activities and won awards for billiards , tennis , rugby fives, eaton fives and rackets. He also became editor of the literary magazine Granta, which has been published since 1889, and a member of the Debating Club of Trinity College.

Sporting successes

In the 1930s Gandar-Dower became a successful tennis player and took part in the Wimbledon Championships and the French Open . He celebrated the greatest success of his tennis career in 1932 when he beat Harry Hopman at the Queen's Club Championship in London . Newspaper articles reported that Hopman was "perplexed by [Gandar-Dower's] unorthodox playing methods." In 1929 and 1932 Gandar-Dower won the Kinnaird Cup, the award for the sport of Eaton Fives, and in 1938 he won the championship in British amateur squash.

Gandar-Dower was also an avid sports pilot. In April 1932 he bought a De Havilland DH.80 Puss Moth and took flight lessons. In June 1932 he took part in the King's Cup Air Race with very little experience and took fourth place. In the following years he developed into an experienced pilot. He was one of the first pilots to fly from England to India .

Further interests lay in the field of zoology and cryptozoology . In 1934 he led an expedition to the Mount Kenya massif and the Aberdare Range in Kenya with the aim of catching a Marozi . This is a species of lion that has not yet been discovered in Kenya. Gandar-Dower failed to achieve his goal of catching a Marozi, or at least photographing it to prove its existence. However, he found several tracks that he believed to be that of a Marozi.

He spent 1935 and 1936 in the Belgian Congo and Kenya, where he climbed active volcanoes and designed a map of Mount Sattima . In 1937 he returned to England with twelve cheetahs and introduced cheetah races there. After months of quarantine and adaptation to the new climatic conditions, the races began at the Romford Greyhound Stadium in Romford. Gandar-Dower revised the belief that greyhounds are the fastest animals in the world by breaking almost every record set by seconds with his cheetahs. Ultimately, however, cheetah races did not prevail because the animals were hardly interested in hauling in the rabbit and did not like to be tied up. In addition, Gandar-Dower caused a scandal when on one occasion he brought a leashed cheetah to the bar of the Queen's Club in London.

author

Gandar-Dower later found success as a writer by publishing books about his adventures and endeavors. In 1934 the book Amateur Adventure was published , based on his flight to India. In 1937 he published The Spotted Lion , which had his attempt to find a Marozi on the subject. This work contributed to make the Marozi known worldwide. In 1938 he wrote the satirical works Inside Britain and Outside Britain with James Riddell . In 1943 the travelogue Into Madagascar was published, in which he wrote about Ranavalona I , a ruler of Madagascar from the 19th century.

In the mid-1930s, Gandar-Dower was working on the book Abyssinian Patchwork: An Anthology , which dealt with the poor treatment of Ethiopians during the time of Italian fascism . However, this book was no longer published during his lifetime. It didn't appear until 1949.

When the Second World War broke out in 1939 , Gandar-Dower was again in the Belgian Congo to photograph gorillas . On his return to England he worked with the polymath Tom Harrisson on the social research project Mass Observation, before he was hired by the Kenyan government to research the Kenyan indigenous people . In this context, further publications emerged, which the Kenyan government described as "excellent". In the further course of the war he worked as a war correspondent and reported, among other things, on the African campaign and the Allied invasion of Madagascar. For this purpose he traveled a lot by bike and canoe . In Toamasina , Madagascar, he came under fire and jumped off an amphibious vehicle with a bowler hat , a typewriter and an umbrella .

death

On February 6, 1944, Gandar-Dower went on board the Khedive Ismail in Mombasa , a former passenger ship converted into a troop transport. The destination was Colombo on the island of Ceylon . There were a total of 1,511 people on board, including the crew, several hundred officers and soldiers and 53 Australian nurses. On February 12, the Khedive Ismail was sunk by a Japanese submarine by torpedo fire near the Addu Atoll .

The ship broke up and sank within two minutes. An accompanying destroyer attacked the submarine and dropped depth charges , which killed numerous other swimmers in the water. A total of 1,297 people died, including dozens of women. Kenneth Gandar-Dower was also among the fatalities. He left an estate of over 75,000 pounds sterling (after's then monetary value). His obituary in Wisden described him as "one of the most versatile players at all times".

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