Born in Leicestershire, England, in 1902, Beryl Clutterbuck (later Markham) moved to Kenya with her family when she was three years old. Her father started a farm at Njoro, but discovered his true talent was in breeding and training horses for racetracks in Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi. Beryl spent most of her childhood on what turned into a horse farm, receiving little formal schooling but learning to speak several African dialects, such as Nandi, from the families employed by her father. As a playmate of Nandi children, Beryl also accompanied the Nandi on their hunts, learning to hunt wild game with a spear. Later, following in her father’s footsteps, Beryl established herself as a successful horse trainer in Nairobi; she married twice during that period—unsuccessfully to Jock Purves and Mansfield Markham, whose name she kept after they separated. In her late twenties, Markham learned to fly a plane, becoming the first woman in Kenya to receive a professional pilot’s license. She worked for several years as a bush pilot, transporting goods, mail, and people to the more remote regions of Africa, and also flew to locate big game for safaris.
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