Kenneth Gandar-Dower - Writing Career

Writing Career

Gandar-Dower was also a successful author, writing about his adventures. His titles include:

• Amateur Adventure, based on his flight to India, was published in 1934. In a contemporary book review, Flight Magazine wrote that Gandar-Dower "produced an amusing record of his adventures ... that nearly everyone will recommend their friends to read."

• Into Madagascar, published in 1943, is a history/travelogue, in which he reports that the nineteenth century Malagasy monarch Queen Ranavalona I had "a passion for sewing her subjects up in sacks and making use of the first-class facilities offered by her capital in the matter of vertical drops."

• The Spotted Lion, published in 1937, recorded Gandar-Dower's search for the marozi through Kenya. The Spotted Lion has been credited with bringing the marozi to the attention of the world.

• Abyssinian patchwork: an anthology, written in the mid-1930s but not released until 1949, covered the mistreatment of Ethiopians under Italian Fascism.

• Inside Britain and Outside Britain were co-written in 1938 with James Riddell. Satires, they are described as having "much gentle irony and are occasionally clairvoyant in their political speculation."