Anthea Ramsay's grandfather was one of the first white men to set foot in Nairobi when it was a newly discovered, barren and dangerous place, devoid of human life but teeming with wild animals. He lived in a tent and had many close encounters with lions and aggressive African tribes with poisoned arrows who had wandered into the area. Her stoical grandmother joined him in 1905 and they started a family - four generations later that family still lives in Kenya.  
The Forgotten Pioneer traces the lives of the author's family through three generations, starting with her grandfather who left his home in Kent in 1899 at the age of 22 to work as an accountant for the newly started Uganda railway. Neither he, his family or his fiance ever imagined that he would fall under the spell of Africa and stay there for the rest of his life! The author describes her parents' decadent lives on the edge of the Happy Valley set and the murder of Lord Erroll, followed by her childhood living through the horrors of the Mau Mau rebellion.