Pip Beverly left school in England when he was fourteen and went with his family to Kenya in 1924. 'Under our Double Terais' is his account of the struggles to make a living on a coffee farm surrounded by large wild animals at Nyeri, 100 miles to the north of Nairobi. His sense of humour is evident in the descriptions of the colourful characters he met and his own adventures and attempts to support himself and his family as a professional hunter before becoming, later in life, a dedicated animal conservationist. The formation of the Kenya Regiment, farming near Nakuru in the Rift Valley after the war, the horrors of the Mau Mau movement and the repercussions of independence are littered with witty anecdotes told by a man, described in the foreword to the book, as having a most delightful sense of the ridiculous.

Net proceeds from the sale of this eBook will be donated to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust an organisation established in memory of the founder Warden of Tsavo East National Park and dedicated to the protection and preservation of endangered species in Kenya - particularly elephants and black rhinos.

Comments from people who read the manuscript prior to publishing as eBook:

A fortune in life—I have the great good fortune of being born in Kenya and any account of those early days brings back wonderful memories which Pip Beverly has done very amusingly in 'Under Our Double Terais'. He has recounted with perception the sad and the funny, the grim and the beautiful and put his own stamp on experiences of people, beasts and surroundings which made up one man's life in those days of a dearth in material wealth but a fortune in 'life'.—John Cheshire, NSW Australia

Fascinating and accurate—This memoir is a very readable account of the hard life of the Kenya settlers between the two World Wars. I thought the descriptions of the countryside and wild life were remarkably good. My father and his brother were similar settlers and I found the book to be both fascinating and accurate, the stories of the people and government officials, the roads, shops, hotels and so on are exactly as they were. The book is a true 'chronicle-history' of the times as told by a settler not endowed with wealth or a title. It is a well written book that anyone who has the slightest interest in or knowledge of Africa would really enjoy.—H.M. Pringle, NSW Australia