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Rearview Mirror Chronicles
Keith Hockton, FRAS, is a publisher, podcaster, writer and author based in Penang, Malaysia. He is South East Asian Editor for International Living, a lifestyle based magazine. He lectures internationally on history and Malaysia (political and economic), and is passionate about making history fun and accessible to all. Keith is a Fellow of The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.
His published books include:
• Atlas of Australian Dive Sites - Travellers Edition (Harper Collins Australia, 2003).
• Penang - An inside guide to its historic homes, buildings, monuments and parks (MPH Publishing, 2012; 2nd Edition 2014; 3rd Edition 2017).
• Festivals of Malaysia (Trafalgar Publishing, 2015).
• The Habitat Penang Hill: A pocket history (Entrepot Publishing, 2018)
• Alana and the Secret Life of Trees at Night (Entrepot Publishing, 2018)
• Penang Then & Now: A Century of Change in Pictures (Entrepot Publishing, 2019; 2nd Edition 2021)
• Bersama Lima - Five Together (Entrepot Publishing, 2022)
Rearview Mirror Chronicles
The Mau Mau - Empire of Blood - Part Two
In Part One, we uncovered the foundations of a rebellion—the Mau Mau oath, the theft of ancestral land, and the British Empire’s ruthless response. But what came next was even more chilling.
This is the part they tried to erase.
Thousands of files—detailing torture, rape, and castration—vanished. Some were locked away. Others were burned. Many were dumped into the sea as colonial officials scrambled to hide the truth.
This wasn’t chaos. It was a cover-up. Cold. Calculated. And deliberate.
For decades, the survivors were gaslit. The atrocities denied. The Empire clung to its lies.
But truth has a way of surfacing.
Eventually, the British government was forced to admit it: the violence was systemic. The orders came from the top. And the damage ran deep.
They paid reparations. They issued an apology. And in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park, a statue now stands—not in triumph, but in memory. A monument to pain, and to those who refused to be forgotten.
The silence is over. The reckoning begins.