The man with the inside story on Tiny Rowland

Kenya

  At his house on Kenya’s coast our neighbour Paul Spicer kept a photograph of himself as quite a young man stepping out with his boss Tiny Rowland, our founding President Jomo Kenyatta and 1970s MI6 chief Sir John Ogilvy Rennie (known as ‘C’). In the image they are all sharply dressed — by perhaps the same Savile Row tailor Tiny acquired to pamper his friends — and they look like the kings of the world. Edward Heath called Tiny the unacceptable face of capitalism — but I always admired the Lonrho boss and Paul was for many years his right-hand man. Naturally when you have been so successful you’re going to make a few enemies, but as Tiny so wisely said, ‘I don’t know why he hates me so much — I never did him a favour.’ Paul was retired and quite elderly when we got to know him and June his wife, who had grown up on an upcountry tea farm in Kenya and was one of the kindest people I ever met.