Alan Moorehead

“game hunting was flourishing; and, dining at Muthaiga Club, I was offered trout freshly caught in the mountains, together with some last bottles of a particularly fragrant Rhine wine. Not since that last bright summer in Paris in 1939, when the wealthy of the world came flocking to spend their money lest they should not visit Paris again, had I seen women so well groomed, wearing so many lush furs. Baboon pelts and leopard skins were particularly popular. Great log fires burned in the grates of the club chimney places, though the nights were scarcely sharp. The men wore dinner-jackets or dress uniform. The conversation tended to hunting. In the day one had golf at Brackenridge, or swimming or riding or fooling round the game reserves where giraffe still roam haphazardly. Normally one looked in at a roadhouse for an apéritif around eight in the evening, and after dinner perhaps went down to Torr’s to dance. They say the altitude at Nairobi makes people slightly crazy, but after the desert I found it all delightful, as though the world were enjoying one long holiday. As”
― Alan Moorehead, Desert War: The North African Campaign 1940-43

“No one could have guessed how deeply Mussolini had been misled by his intelligence services on two vital points. It seems he really believed the Greeks would not fight. That was his first error. He failed to learn the lessons of the Republicans in Spain, the Finns in Finland. Nor was Mussolini alone in failing to see that war was still made with men first and machines second, and that a people once fired with a passionate hatred and an emotional patriotism are the most dangerous enemy in the world though they lack every essential piece of equipment.”
― Alan Moorehead, Desert War: The North African Campaign 1940-43