coastweek.com

HER FAVOURITE SUBJECT
HAS ALWAYS BEEN CATS

writing books on kenya since 1974

Coastweek - - About Author Jan Hemsing: Born in England on Christmas Eve 1917, but domiciled in East Africa since the end of World War II, Jan Hemsing, who has walked and driven across many miles of Kenya and Tanganyika (as it was then), has been writing books published in Kenya (and one in America) since 1974, many of them the histories of Kenya's hotels.

The first booklet, Old Nairobi and The New Stanley Hotel, came out in 1974 followed by the first edition of Then and Now, Nairobi's Norfolk Hotel, which later would go into second, third and fourth editions until the updated and handsome present book to celebrate the Norfolk's 100th anniversary.

Other hotel books and booklets by the author have included:

Nyali Beach Hotel in 1975 and 1996;
Keekorok Lodge and Samburu Lodge, both in 1985;
Naivasha and the Lake Naivasha Hotel in 1992; and then, for Mohamed Amin's Camerapix,

Coastweek - - Jan Hemsing
now nearer 90 than 80 old:
this photograph of her was
taken some ten years ago.

The Beauty of Amboseli in 1993, and 1997.

Her most recent booklet was in 2004 for the 30th anniversary of Mombasa's Leisure Lodge, Beach and Golf Resort.

Encounters With Lions was published by Trophy Room Books in America in 1994.

Stories and articles written in Kenya and published abroad have been in Harper's Bazaar and Woman's Realm in England, Personality in South Africa and one in Australia whose name she can't remember.

Her favorite subject outside the above has always been cats, of which at one time she had over 80 strays (yes, eighty) in her jungley little old Westlands garden, most of them rescued from the city.