Alexander Larman

Should Charles apologise to Kenya for Britain’s colonial past?

(Photo: Getty)

It was no coincidence that Kenya was chosen for King Charles’s first state visit as monarch outside Europe. After all, it was at the Treetops hotel in Aberdare National Park on 6 February 1952 that his mother acceded to the throne. As the politician and diarist Harold Nicholson quipped, ‘She became Queen while perched in a tree in Africa watching the rhinoceros come down to the pool to drink.’

Charles’s visit had to acknowledge the wrongs done in his country’s name while not offering a full, formal apology.

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Written by
Alexander Larman
Alexander Larman is an author and books editor of Spectator World, our US-based edition

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