Sara Wheeler is the latest in a long line of women to fall under the Finch Hatton spell. Who wouldn’t want a swashbuckling lion slayer stopping in between safaris to recite poems and embrace her under the mosquito netting? Immortalized in “Out of Africa” (written under Blixen’s pen name, Isak Dinesen), he was her artistic muse, but before that he was her escape from the drudgery of a loveless marriage, a failing Kenyan farm and a debilitating bout of syphilis, thanks to her husband, a feckless baron. The younger son of the 13th Earl of Winchilsea (who was also the Eighth Earl of Nottingham), he was equally at ease in the African bush and on the country estate. He was a war hero, a pilot and a lover of opera. He was arrestingly handsome, intelligent, athletic and courageous. It’s no wonder Karen Blixen fell madly in love with Denys Finch Hatton in 1918.
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