White Mischief

White Mischief may refer to:

White Mischief (novel)

White Mischief is a novel by British journalist James Fox, first published in hardback 1982 by Jonathan Cape and in paperback in 1984 by Penguin. It is the fictionalized account of the unsolved murder in 1941 of Josslyn Hay, the Earl of Erroll, a British expatriate in Kenya. The title is a pun on the 1932 Evelyn Waugh novel Black Mischief. The book was adapted for film in 1987.

Synopsis

Part novel and part journalism the book is divided into two distinct sections. Initially presented as a classic murder mystery, the first part of the story focuses on the dissolute lifestyles of the wealthy elite in colonial Kenya. Casual affairs, wife-swapping, habitual drunkenness and cocaine abuse were all common. The main protagonists are the victim, Josslyn Hay, a handsome womanizing aristocrat, his beautiful married lover Lady Diana Broughton and Diana’s much older husband Sir Delves Broughton. Although the identity of the murderer was never actually discovered at the time, the author claims to have found new evidence pointing to Sir Delves, and the second part of the book concentrates on the author’s investigations and interviews with surviving participants in the drama, both in Kenya and in England.

White Mischief (film)

White Mischief is a 1988 film dramatising the events of the Happy Valley murder case in Kenya in 1941, when Sir Henry "Jock" Delves Broughton was tried for the murder of Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll.

Based on a book by the Sunday Times journalist James Fox (originally researched with Cyril Connolly for an article in December 1969), it was directed by Michael Radford.

Plot

With much of the rest of the world at war, a number of bored British aristocrats live dissolute and hedonistic lives in a region of British Kenya known as Happy Valley, drinking, drugging and indulging in decadent sexual affairs to pass the time.

On 24 January 1941, Josslyn Hay, the philandering Earl of Erroll, is found dead in his car in a remote location. The Earl has a noble pedigree but a somewhat sordid past and a well-deserved reputation for having affairs with married women.

Diana Delves Broughton is one such woman. She is the beautiful wife of Sir John Henry Delves Broughton, known to most as "Jock," a man 30 years her senior. Diana has a pre-nuptial understanding with her husband that should either of them fall in love with someone else, the other will do nothing to impede the romance.